Expected investment statistics

What does the survey cover?

Purpose

The purpose of this statistic is to provide insight into expected (future) investments by enterprises. The perspective is the total value of the investments in fixed assets, which enterprises expect to put to use in the current calendar year. This concerns assets to be acquired in ownership.

Target population

All enterprises with 10 or more employees (size class 40 and higher), which are economically active during the reporting period and whose main activity takes place in one of the following SIC2008 sectors 10-33, manufacturing.

Statistical unit

Enterprise. The actual transactor in the production process, characterised by self-sufficiency with respect to the decisions about that process and by offering its products to third parties. An enterprise comprises one or several legal entities.
It follows from this definition and especially from the self-sufficiency element that an enterprise can have more than one establishment, but also more than one legal unit. (Legal units include both natural and legal persons). This is the case when individual establishments or legal units do not operate independently. Conversely, it is possible to distinguish between different parts within a legal unit that operate independently in terms of production. These then constitute as many enterprises as defined. The latter occurs especially in the case of larger groups with diverse activities. When a unit thus defined extends over several countries, the Dutch part is regarded as a whole enterprise for the purpose of national statistics.

In official CBS terminology the enterprise as defined here is called the business unit (BE), in order to avoid confusion with the term enterprise used in common parlance, which is not very precise in this respect.
The statistical unit enterprise is an operationalization of the kind-of-activity unit, as defined by Eurostat. This definition combines two requirements that may conflict: contributing to one activity versus corresponding to one or more operational units. The Netherlands gives priority to the second requirement when operationalizing to the statistical unit enterprise.

Commencement of survey

The survey in its present form started in 2000. Data from 2000 onwards forms a sequentially comparable series. Expected investments were also studied during the period 1968-1999, but this does not form a sequentially comparable series of figures with the survey in the current set-up.

Frequency

Annual.

Publication strategy

The expected investment data of year T have the following publication timetable:
• In the middle of year T:
Expected investments for T (definitive)
Realised investments for T minus 1 (preliminary)
Realised investments for T minus 2 (definitive)
• At the end of year T:
Realised investments for T minus 1 (preliminary)

How is the survey conducted?

Type of survey

The survey is a sample survey. On the basis of the SIC and enterprise size, a stratified sample is drawn from the survey population. Enterprises with more than 10 employees are an integral part of this survey.

Survey method

Respondents may submit the required data electronically.

Respondents

Enterprises.

Sample size

The sampling fraction of the expected investment survey is usually around 75 percent. The sample thus comprises slightly over 6,000 enterprises.

Checking and correction methods

Statistics Netherlands conducts plausibility, completeness and consistency checks on data received from the respondents. Estimations are conducted for enterprises not responding (on time).

Weighting

The population estimation is conducted by means of a direct estimator . This means that the value for the expected investments is multiplied by N/n, wherein N stands for the number of enterprises in the population and n for the number of responding enterprises.

Quality of the results

Sequential comparability

The method applied in the statistical processing of the sample data is aimed at ensuring comparability of the results over time.

Quality strategy

The statistic is compiled using error detection and correction methods, performing accuracy studies and ensuring the highest possible response rate.