15 - INDUSTRY

Contents

1. Activity of the manufacturing sector

2. Electricity production and consumption

3. Construction activity

4. Procurement contracts for public works - Regione Lombardia

5. Other statistics

1. Activity of the manufacturing sector

This section presents the main findings of the survey on the short term trends of the manufacturing sector conducted by Unioncamere Lombardia.

The survey is conducted on a quarterly basis on two different samples: enterprises in the industry sector with more than ten persons employed and handicraft enterprises with more than three persons employed.

The samples are stratified according to the economic activity, the enterprise size and the province where the enterprise is located. Some strata are oversampled in order to ensure higher significance of the data disaggregated by enterprises size, economic activity or province.

Every quarterly the number of valid interviews collected (i.e. excluding non responses) is 1,500 for industry enterprises and 1,100 for handicrafts.

The data are collected via CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview), a method that enables to obtain in a short time, information on more than 20 quantitative variables and around 10 qualitative ones.

The data are weighted according to the employment structure, which is updated on a regular basis.

The survey results are disaggregated by:

• enterprise size, 3 classes (from10 to 49 persons employed; from 50 to 199 and 200 or more);
• economic activity, 13 sectors (metalworking, non-metal minerals, chemicals, engineering, means of transport, food, textiles, leather and footwear, wearing apparel, wood and furniture, paper and publishing, rubber and plastics, miscellaneous industries);
• economic destination of the goods produced, in 3 classes(final consumption goods, investment goods, intermediate consumption goods);
• territory, in the 12 provinces of Lombardy (including the new province of Monza-Brianza).

The time series available enable to calculate index number on a fixed basis, which represent a quantitative and synthetic information that can be easily interpreted. Index number for turnover and orders are adjusted to exclude the price effect. They are therefore presented at constant prices, for a clearer reading of the trends.

Time series are seasonally adjusted through the TRAMO-SEATS procedure, which is presently used also by the main national and international statistics institutes (EUROSTAT, ISTAT, ISAE, etc.). Interventions on the data refer to automatic correction of outliers ((Additive Outliers; Level Shift and Transitory Change); correction of the Easter effect; correction of calendar effects due to working days and leap years; correction of effects due to national holidays.

Trend rates are corrected according to the number of working days through TRAMO-SEATS procedure. The correction is applied every quarter on the entire time series and not only on the last data collected, which increases the precision of the estimates relating to previous years.

2. Electricity production and consumption

Statistics on production and consumption of electricity are of source Terna S.p.A., which is the primary owner of the National high-voltage Electricity Transmission Grid (RTN). It is also responsible for the transmission and dispatching of energy on the high-voltage grid throughout the entire Italian  territory.

Terna’s Statistics Office is part of Sistan (National Statistics System) and is the producer of Italian official statistics on the whole electricity sector. It is also responsible for the transmission of official statistics  to international institutions such as Eurostat, IEA, OECD, ONU. 

Statistics produced by Terna over all operators in the electricity sector (around 1,800) and refer mainly to:

• General data: include a summary of all the principal statistical data of the year compared with the similar data of the previous year.
• Grid: indicates the figures regarding the high voltage and extra high voltage grid at the end of the year.
• Power plants: indicate the figures regarding the hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants and those from renewable sources.
• Loads: analyze the hourly loads with particular reference to the third Wednesday of December.
• Production: indicate the hydroelectric and thermoelectric production as well as that from renewable sources.
• Consumption: analyze consumption according to the Istat’s sectors of economic activity and according to the different types of users.

3. Construction activity

Data on construction activity are released by Istat and are collected through the survey on building permits.

The survey is part of the Italian Statistical Programme and complies with EU Council Regulation (1165/98 of 19 May 1998), which sets that the main data collected be transmitted to Eurostat within 90 days after the quarter of reference.

The survey on building permits has total coverage and is conducted on a monthly basis. The information collected refers to projects of new buildings (residential or non residential) and to extensions to already existing buildings.

The survey does not cover changes and restructuring of already existing buildings that do not give rise to changes in the volume of the buildings.

The survey unit is the construction work, represented either by a newly built building (even in the case of a demolished one and totally rebuilt) or by the extension of an already existing building. Two or more works relating to the same building permit account for two or more survey units.

The data are collected through a questionnaire on paper (model ISTAT/AE) that must be filled in by the person who is requiring the building permit.

The offices of the municipal administration collect the questionnaires, check the correctness of the answers and send them every month to Istat. In case during a given month no building permits have been issued, the municipal administration must report  that during that month there has been no construction activity.

The survey questionnaire is made up of three parts:

• the first part refers to general information concerning the work (duration of the works, location, nature of the work, destination, financing, heating system, etc.);

• the second part refers only to residential buildings and inquires on : number of floors, volume, area, number of housing units, breakdown of the housing units by number of rooms and surface area classes;

• the third part refers only to non-residential buildings and inquires on: building size, part used for housing, economic destination, type of work.

4. Procurement contracts for public works - Regione Lombardia

Data on procurement contracts for public works are collected through the Observatory on Public Works managed by Regione Lombardia.

This observatory is part of a broader system: the Online System of the General Directorates for Housing, Infrastructure and Mobility.

Data in the Observatory refer to the number of procurement contracts and to their value.

Contracts are classified according to the type and the category of the public work.

Categories are:

01 – New construction

02 - Demolition

03 - Recovery

04 - Restructuring

05 - Restoration

06 – Ordinary maintenance

07 – Extraordinary maintenance

08- Completion

09 - Extension

Types of work are:

1 - road

2 - airport

3 - railway

4 – sea, lake and river

5 – land defence

6 – electricity production and dispatch

8 – social and school construction

9 – other construction

10 – residential construction

11 – works for environmental protection

12 – sports and entertainment

13 – agricultural infrastructures

15 – water resources

16 – non-electric energy production and dispatch

1A – cultural heritage

1B – cycle and walking paths

30 – health care structures

31 – religious

32 - defence

33 – management and administration

34 – judicial and penitentiary

35 – health and hygienic

36 – public safety

37 - tourism

39 – infrastructures for industrial activities

3A – purification plants

40 – trade and handicrafts

88 – other transport lines

90 – other infrastructures not elsewhere classified

9A – works to eliminate architectural barriers

90A – urban design

9C – public lighting

9D – other infrastructures for the territory and the environment

9E - other infrastructures for the energy sector

9F - other

5. Other statistics

Mining activity, refining and transportation of hydrocarbons

Statistics on this theme presented in the yearbook are aimed at providing an overview on the structure of the mining activity and of the production and transportation (via pipes) of hydrocarbons.

The data are derived from different sources, such as:

• Ministry of Economic Development
• Unione Petrolifera (Association of Petroleum Producers, a body that does not belong to the Italian Statistical System)
• APAT (Agency for Environmental Protection and Technical Services), which in 2008 became part of ISPRA (Institute for Environmental Protection and Research)

Consumption of natural gas and petroleum products

Data on this subject are derived from statistics on energy produced and released by the Department for Energy of the Ministry of Economic  Development.

The primary source of information is SNAM Rete Gas: an integrated group heading the regulated gas sector in Italy and a major player in Europe in terms of its regulatory asset base (RAB). It transports and dispatches natural gas, regasifies liquefied natural gas and distributes and stores natural gas, with acknowledged expertise.

The data presented therefore refer to the quantities of gas dispatched by SNAM Rete Gas. They account for around 98% of total gas consumption in Italy.

Production of cement

Statistics on the production of cement presented in the yearbook are based on data collected by the Ministry of Economic Development and are released by AITEC (Italian Technical and Economic Association of Cement).