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Survey Name

Purchasing Power Parities - Consumer Goods Surveys

Survey purpose and legal basis

Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) are indicators of price level differences across countries. They indicate how many currency units a particular quantity of goods and services costs in different countries. There are six Consumer Goods Surveys which are conducted over a three-year survey cycle and are detailed as follows:

  • Food, beverage and tobacco
  • Personal appearance
  • House and garden
  • Transport, restaurants and hotels
  • Services
  • Furniture and health

The production of PPPs is a multilateral exercise involving the National Statistical Institutes of the participating countries, Eurostat and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and is governed by two regulations that provide the legal basis for Eurostat comparisons, namely:

  • Regulation (EC) No 1445/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2007 establishing common rules for the provision of basic information on Purchasing Power Parities and their calculation and dissemination.
  • Commission Regulation (EU) No 193/2011 of 28 February 2011 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1445/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the system of quality control used for Purchasing Power Parities.

Who uses the results?

Eurostat is the main user of the data. The aggregated results are published on the Eurostat website. PPPs can be used as currency conversion rates to convert expenditures expressed in national currencies into an artificial common currency (the Purchasing Power Standard, PPS), thus eliminating the effect of price level differences across countries.

Uses

  • Convert national accounts aggregates into comparable volume aggregates. In particular, PPPs can be used to compare the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of different countries without the figures being distorted by differing price levels in those countries.
  • Analyse relative price levels across countries. For this purpose, the PPPs are divided by the current nominal exchange rate to obtain a price level index (PLI) which expresses the price level of a given country relative to others.

Is your personal data confidential and how long will the data be retained?

All information supplied to the CSO is treated as strictly confidential. The Statistics Act, 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards: information collected may be used only for statistical purposes, and no details that might be related to an identifiable person or business undertaking may be divulged to any other government department or body.

 

Survey data will be retained indefinitely as one of the primary purposes of the data collection is to obtain longitudinal information on price changes.

The sources and categories of your personal data, where the data has not been collected directly from you:

N/A

For further information on this survey, your Data Protection rights and how your data is used please contact:

Patsy King, Statistician, Purchasing Power Parities, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12X00E.

Tel +353 (21) 4535502 or E-mail ppp@cso.ie

Data Protection Information:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:

  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission. Contact details: Office of the Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28, Ireland.
  • The right to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction or to object to the processing of your personal data.

However, because your data is processed for statistical purposes these rights may be limited in accordance with Article 89 of the GDPR. This is due to the fact that the exercise of any of these rights may render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of the statistical processing and such restriction maybe necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.

Central Statistics Office Data Protection Officer Contact Details: