Press Statement

Preasráiteas

11 May 2018

Industrial Production and Turnover Index has been rebased so that Year 2015 = 100

Go to release: Industrial Production & Turnover March 2018

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (11 May 2018) released the Industrial Production and Turnover Index for March 2018. Today’s figures have been rebased to the Base Year 2015 = 100, using the Census of Industrial Production 2015 and the rebased Wholesale Price Index Year 2015 = 100 (see Editor’s Note).

Significantly, the base period weights now incorporate the step level shift that occurred in industry in 2015, which was driven by globalisation activity including the relocations of entire balance sheets (mainly of intellectual property assets) to Ireland. The output activity related to these relocations has had consequential impacts on industrial production statistics.

Commenting on the implications for users, Stephanie Kelleher, CSO Statistician, said: “Rebasing occurs every five years in line with international practice, EU statistical requirements and in order to maintain the relevancy of the weights. There is no change in the underlying methodology of the Industrial Production and Turnover Index. The data is compiled by the CSO on the basis of uniform standards and international practice”.

Due to the concentration of production in certain sectors, the rebased series contains a less detailed breakdown of sectors than before. This is for reasons of statistical confidentiality. Stephanie Kelleher commented that “the CSO is legally bound to protect the confidentiality of all information supplied by data providers and cannot divulge any figures that would lead to the disclosure of information on an individual or company”.

In September 2016, the Economic Statistics Review Group (ESRG) made a number of recommendations to address the challenges of globalisation activities for CSO statistics. The group’s recommendations included the provision of new indicators of the domestic economy.

Commenting on the impact of globalisation activities on the IPT index, Stephanie Kelleher continued: “The CSO is currently working on an IPT series weighted by employment rather than by value added. We hope to publish this in the second half of 2018.

We are also investigating the possibility of measuring domestic production in the monthly survey, so that an index distinguishing domestic production can be compiled. Annual data on domestic production sold is currently available in the PRODCOM data series”.

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