Description

The Industrial Index measures the monthly development of the productive activity of industrial branches, in other words, of extractive, manufacturing and production industries and distribution of electrical energy, water and gas. This indicator reflects the complete evolution of quantity and quality, eliminating the influence of prices.

To obtain the IPI a continuous survey is carried out that investigates the more than 13,000 establishments in which information on 980 representative products is obtained on all activity branches. Data is collected by mail or via interviewers.

The IPI methodology is fully harmonised with that of European Union countries.

The new IPI

The new IPI, base 2000, is the result of a thorough reform process of the previous index, base 1990. Apart from introducing the necessary update of the weightings, its analytical architecture has been updated, adapting it to the new century Spanish industrial structure.

The IPI base 2000 has broadened the number of informant establishments (from 9,000 to more than 13,000) and has updated the basket of products representative of all of industry, including new products such as wind energy or fibre optic cables. Its research field has also been broadened to other activities such as the wine industry.

So that the new statistic meets the needs established by Autonomous Communities a working table was constituted between the INE and the AC. This table has several meetings and encouraged the exchange of information during 2001 and 2002. Now, the new production index facilitates calculating data per Autonomous Community, apart from those traditionally published nationally.

Up to the end of 2002 the INE published the IPI base 1990, that meant passing from a quarterly system (in force since the IPI base 1972) to one of the monthly previews in all industrial activities.

Beggining on January 2009 INE started to publish the IPI in Base 2005, updating the weightings, the basket of representative products and the panel of information units. In addition, the Industrial Production Index has adapted to the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE-2009).

The calendar effect

The IPI is presented in original and corrected series of calendar effects, which is the most representative of its evolution. This calendar effect correction is carried out to eliminate the influence on the number of working days and bank holidays in the different Autonomous Communities and in this way to be able to carry out homogeneous comparisons between the months of different years.

IPI weightings

The activity branch weightings and type of IPI goods are: