Services trade by enterprise characteristics (STEC)

Services trade by enterprise characteristics (hereinafter–STEC) statistics provide detailed and timely information on enterprises engaged in international trade in services by kind of economic activity (NACE Rev. 2) and size class of enterprises (by number of persons employed), product (EBOPS 2010), type of control.

For the STEC data compilation the existing national statistical data sources are used without increasing the burden to the respondents.

• Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community, Rev. 2 (NACE Rev. 2);
• The Extended Balance of Payments Services classification 2010 (EBOPS 2010).

NACE Sections A to U.

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Residents of Latvia (NACE Rev. 2 Sections A to U) who have services trade transactions with EU and non-EU (Extra-EU) countries.

Latvia.

Data are available since 2020.

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thsd euro.

Annual data.

• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics;
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics;
• Regulation (EC) No 184/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 January 2005 on Community statistics concerning balance of payments, international trade in services and foreign direct investment.

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Confidentiality of the information provided is protected by Statistics Law: 

Section 7. Competence of the Statistical Institution in Production of Official Statistics

• (2) The statistical institution shall:
• 8) ensure statistical confidentiality in accordance with the procedures laid down in this Law;

Section 17. Data Processing and Statistical Confidentiality

Section 19. Dissemination of Official Statistics

• (1) The statistical institution shall disseminate official statistics in a way that does not allow either directly or indirectly identify a private individual or a State institution in cases other than those laid down in Section 25 of this Law.
• (2) The statistical institution shall publish the official statistics which have been produced within the framework of the Official Statistics Programme in a publicly available form and by a predetermined deadline on the portal of official statistics. Until the moment of publication of official statistics this statistics shall not be published.

Primary confidentiality

In enterprise statistics cells are defined as confidential according to threshold rule and dominance rule (n,k). Cells are safe to be published if contributed by at least 4 respondents (n=4) as well as share of a single contributor is less than 80% (1,80) or two contributors share is less than 90% (2,90).

Secondary confidentiality

To ensure protection of aggregated data, secondary confidentiality is applied to supress additional cells, thus protecting primary confidential cells. We select secondary confidential cells to provide adequate protection while minimizing information loss.

Applicable secondary confidentiality determination criteria:

1. Secondary confidentiality is determined using T-Argus software, which performs automatic secondary confidentiality calculation.
2. Secondary confidential cells are selected manually.

All official statistics are published according to the advance dissemination calendar, at 13:00.

Advance dissemination calendar

Statistical release dates and times are pre-announced in the data dissemination calendar.

Annual.

Not published on a regular basis.

Not published on a regular basis.

Statistics database

Not available.

Not available.

• STEC (Services Trade by Enterprise Characteristics) Compilers Guide;
• Balance of payments methodology (Bank of Latvia);
• IMF Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6).

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To achieve high user satisfaction and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, the CSB has introduced a Quality Management System (QMS). The system defines and, at the procedural level, describes processes of statistical production and identifies the persons responsible for their monitoring throughout all production stages. Its structure follows the principles of the Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM).

The QMS sets out the sequence in which processes are implemented – that is, the activities to be performed, including verifications of processes and produced statistics, the order and implementation requirements of these activities, and the persons responsible for their execution. It also defines the approach to evaluating production processes and their outcomes, and to implementing necessary improvements.

The CSB quality management system is certified to the ISO 9001:2015 standard Quality management systems — Requirements since 2018 (scope of certification: development, production and dissemination of official statistics). The original certification audit was performed by BM Trada Latvija SIA and a recertification audit, in 2024, was performed by Bureau Veritas Latvia SIA.

The CSB information security management system is certified to the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 standard Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Information security management systems — Requirements since 2017 (scope of certification: collection, processing and storage of information and data for functions of the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia. Provision of statistical information for inland and foreign users). The original certification audit was performed by BM Certification SIA and a recertification audit, in 2024, was performed by Bureau Veritas Latvia SIA.

The quality of statistics is assessed in accordance with the existing requirements of both external and internal regulatory enactments, as well as the established quality criteria.

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European statistics stipulates that European statistics shall be developed, produced and disseminated on the basis of uniform standards and harmonised methods. In this context, the following quality criteria shall apply: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, punctuality, accessibility, clarity, comparability and coherence.

As the national statistical institute and the principal authority of the national statistical system, the CSB has set common general institutional-level quality requirements for authorities responsible for producing or providing national statistics. These requirements are based on the European Statistics Code of Practice, which comprises 16 principles.

The overall assessment of data quality is good.

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CSB aims to produce reliable statistics, which serve as a basis for analysing socio-economic trends and informing decisions. Feedback on data quality can be sent by the e-mail to pasts@csp.gov.lv

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The data are comparable with the data of other European Union countries.

EU data on Eurostat website Section: International trade in services.

Data are available since 2020.

The data is consisting with the Structural Business Statistics (SBS) and Foreign AffiliaTes Statistics (FATS).

The data in the database have been published based on the detailed records of annual services statistics (ITS) published by the Bank of Latvia (based on EBOPS 2010).

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In line with the strategic directions of the European Statistics System and latest trends in statistical production, continuous use of information acquired in regular CSB surveys and proportionate reduction of the response burden are among the key CSB priorities.

In cooperation with holders of administrative data and in line with the competences provided for in the Statistics Law, CSB is striving to solve the issues related to the use of administrative data sources, thus aiming to acquire as comprehensive and high-quality administrative data allowing to reduce response burden on enterprises and households as possible.

CSB measures to improve use of administrative data and reduce response burden taken in 2024 (in Latvian only).

Revision Policy is an important component of good governance practice addressed more and more often in the international statistical society. The objective of the Revision Policy is to lay down the order of review or revision of the prepared and published data. The first chapter of the present document explains the terms applied in the Revision Policy, the second chapter shortly characterises the CSB Revision Policy, whereas the third chapter stipulates the revision cycle of the statistical data produced by the CSB.

Revision policy guidelines 08.09.2022 (PDF, 597 KB)

The published data are final and are not revised.

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• Personalised individual data of enterprises on the exports and imports of services by type of service, collected and processed by the Bank of Latvia;
• Information from the Statistical business register.

Annual.

Data on the exports and imports of services are received from the Bank of Latvia.

Before data transmission to Eurostat, the data are checked using Eurostat provided validation service.

Personalised individual data of enterprises on the exports and imports of services by type of service, collected and processed by the Bank of Latvia.

Statistics is compiled by types of activity according to NACE Rev. 2, by size classes according to the number of persons employed, products (EBOPS 2010) and type of control. For some service providers it is not possible to specify the economic activity, country, type of service or control. For example, travellers, natural persons or non-residents.

Missing data are not imputed.

The data are not subject to adjustment.

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