Index of household consumption of goods, December 2005

Purchase of vehicles and petrol increased by 14.4 per cent from November to December last year, and pulls the index upwards. The consumption of electricity increased by 3.7 per cent in the same period.

Consumption of food, beverages and tobacco decreased slightly by 0.5 per cent. At the same time consumption of other goods increased by 0.6 per cent.

The unadjusted volume index of commodity consumption was 0.5 per cent higher in December 2005 than in December 2004.

Method differs from the index of retail sale

The index of commodity consumption describes the development in household consumption of goods, while the index of retail sales measures the development in retail sales. As opposed to the index of retail sales, the index of commodity consumption includes goods that are not sold in retail trade. Thus, the calculation of the index of commodity consumption is based on information from the index of retail sales in addition to information on purchases of cars, sales of petrol and oil to petrol stations and the consumption of electricity unadjusted for changes in temperature. This may result in deviations in the development of the two indices.

The index of commodity consumption uses the same definitions and methods of compilation as the quarterly national accounts, and thus serves as an indicator of household consumption of goods in the quarterly national accounts.

Timeliness is important in the release of statistics, and the index of commodity consumption may therefore have to rely on preliminary estimates in some cases. Such estimates are replaced in the subsequent release. This applies, inter alia, to figures on electricity consumption, where short-term statistics from the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) are used. Later on these short-term statistics are replaced by electricity statistics from Statistics Norway. This implies that the index of commodity consumption normally will be revised in the subsequent publishing.