News release on business cycle survey will change

7 January 2016

The CZSO news release on business cycle survey will undergo in 2016 several minor changes. Its text will not reflect primarily the balance of composite confidence indicator and balances of confidence indicators of respective industries anymore, but what will be reflected are their base indices. The time series are not to be disrupted in any way. The methodology remains unchanged.

The target of the modification is to bring business cycle survey data interpretation closer to the practice of the European Commission and other renowned institutes (e.g. German IFO or French INSEE). Data presentation by means of base indices makes it easier for users to compare the so-called soft data on economic sentiment with the later so-called hard data surveyed by short-term business statistics or with those published by the quarterly national accounts statistics. It is an advantage of base indices presentation that they can be better used also for analytical activity, because negative values are eliminated.

The CZSO notifies in advance about these partial and formal modifications of the news release that should be more user friendly being aware that especially experts among the public work with the data in details and in a routine way.

In total, wording of eight sentences will be modified in a text of over a page. Annexed tables as well as their order will remain unchanged. In the end of the news release (text part), the part called Notes will be extended by information that base indices are provided and that the 2005 average is the base. The first news release in the new form will be published on 25 January 2016. Balances of Confidence Indicators will remain in the Annexes - Table 2.

To find out more about business cycle surveys, see:  https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/business_cycle_surveys.

Contact:
Petra Báčová
CZSO spokeswoman
Phone No.: (+420) 274 052 017
Mobile phone No.: (+420) 778 727 232
e-mail: petra.bacova@czso.cz

Jiří Obst
Head of the Business Cycle Surveys Unit
Phone No.: (+420) 274 054 116
e-mail: jiri.obst@czso.cz