1
Session No. 1
Paper No.7
Country: Hungary
Progress Report
Peter Pukli
Hungarian Central Statistical Office
The results of the economic census in 1997.
1.As it was reported at the roundtable conference held in Tokyo an economic census was conducted in Hungary, which provided data to the new Business Register. More than one million economic units were interviewed in the census. Of these 938 thousand were identified which amounts to 88% of the whole survey population. The majority of the ecomomic units was ready to co-operate with the interviewers: 742 thousand (70%) completed the questionnaire fully, 132 thousand (12%) provided partial information (in most cases they did not answer the question relating to their sales), meanwhile 7000 (0,6%) refused to co-operate. The interviewers failed to make any contact with 123 thousand units (12%).
The identified economic units can be listed as follows:
Active667 239
Dead127 530
Ceased its operation 79 316
No information available about their operation 64 478
2.The regional outcomes of the census were generally more favourable in the country than in the capital. The average identification rate reached 96% in rural area. The same figure was 78% in the capital. The register staff made efforts to check uncertain, incomplete information by using a large scale of quality assurance techniques.
3.As a result of the census 300 000 data items have been revised in the old register (addresses, operation status, etc.). Before eliminating the dead units, a comparison control with other administrative records has to be implemented to confirm the change.
Single desk registration of businesses
4.The introduction of the system of single desk registration matches the objective to reduce the administration burden on the businesses and to improve consistency among the registers of several authorities. As a legal basis of the implementation of the new system, the appropriate Acts come into force in June of 1998. The registration procedure of the new businesses has become more simple and convenient. In the previous system the registration procedure was rather time consuming: before setting up a new business it was needed to be registered at the different authorities separately (Court of Registration, Tax Office, Social Security Governments, Central Statistical Office, Professional Chambers).
5.In the new system the Court of Registration is responsible for recording all types of companies, meanwhile the different Professional Chambers deal with the individual entrepreneurs.
6.A uniformed questionnaire has been developed for collecting the necessary data from the new businesses to be registered in the integrated system. Unfortunately, the collected data do not cover all information requested by the Statistical Register entirely, thus certain complementary information is needed to report directly to the Central Statistical Office.
7.Three different ID codes - one for the HCSO, one for the Court of Registration and one for the Social Security Government - are generated automatically by the computer network and the appropriate data items are transmitted on line to the offices involved in the registration procedure. At this moment there is no regular and comprehensive maintenance program available for handling the changes of data in the new system.
The new Business Register of the HCSO
8.After two years of preparatory work the new Business Register was put into operation in October 1997. The BR has a three-level structure: Enterprises covering legal units in our conceptual framework; local units (at this present stage it contains only the local units of retail trade branches); kind of activity units.
9.The new BR is based on the information obtained from the economic census presented in details in the first paragraph. The parameters of the units are continuously updated meanwhile all pieces of significant historical information are also stored in the BR.
10.According to our original project-plan the registration of companies would be undertaken by the CSO. The data would be captured in the regional offices and transmitted to the central database. The direct communication between the representatives of the businesses as clients and the statistical staff facilitates checking and correction of the data. The actual information about the government units and the individual entrepreneurs would be drawn weekly from the administrative records of the Tax Office.
11.The introduction of the single desk registration system has resulted in fundamental changes in the maintenance of BR. As the records of the Court of Registration and the Professional Chambers have become the primary data sources we are pressed to comply with their registration procedure, to reorganize our system, to develop new applications.
The register of retail trade outlets
12.On the second level of the HCSO Business Register a special subregister has been defined for the local units of the HORECA sector. The SHOP subregister includes the retail trade outlets, restaurants and public accommodations surveyed in the retail trade census of 1996.
13.Before setting up the BR SHOP subregister a so called "zero" maintenance procedure was needed to be implemented because of the 15 months timelag between the survey and the final data-processing. For this reason HCSO asked the local governments to revise the address-list of the local units based on the database of retail trade census. In this procedure 154 thousand local units were identified, and 56 thousand as uncertain items were recorded. In the second round of the checking procedure the erroneous addresses were corrected by using the addresses stored at BR. Many other errors were linked to the incorrect identification code which were also corrected by making use of the same source.
14.The SHOP subregister started working in January, 1998. The regular maintenance procedure of this register based on the regular data supply of local governments was integrated in the updating system of the BR. The first experiences show that the demography of these units is very vivid: within three months 10% of the units have had changes in one or more parameters.
Agricultural Farm Register
15.The data collection system of agricultural statistics is mainly based on sample surveys. Theregister of agricultural holdings serves as the frame for the land use, crop production and livestock surveys.
16.The farm register was set up on the basis of the full-scope survey of agricultural holdings carried out in October, 1994. It contains names, addresses, statistical identification codes, significant physical data on activities and production resources of over 1200 thousands farms.
17.Due to the process of privatisation and recompensation which have not yet been finished, the register is becoming obsolete. Representativity of the samples has been becoming doubtful, as the samples are selected from the old register having outdated parameters of the holdings and the subpopulation of the newly formed farms remain ignored.
18.The general agricultural census to be carried out in the near future provides a good opportunity to update the farm register. The survey should meet the requirements of the World Census of Agriculture 2000. It is planned to be implemented in 1999. The Hungarian agriculture is characterised by the great number of small farms, producing mainly for own consumption. To avoid unnecessary costs and to achieve the coverage required, these small farms will get a simplified questionnaire.
Steps towards EDI data collection
19.At the beginning of this year a project was launched to apply EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) based technique for statistical data collection. The following tasks had to be implemented:
- Elaborating the EDI-standards (EDIFACT-RDRMES and RDRHUN). The specialities of the HCSO together with the international practice have been taken into account.
- Providing for the adequate technical tools for EDI at the respondent's side. The experts have made efforts to involve the different surveys as much as possible in EDI and to secure importing the required data from the various type of business administration records (financial, wages etc.) instead of manual data entry. The system is simple, clear and independent of the potential structural changes of the survey questionnaires.
- Providing the required EDI facilities at the HCSO's side. It was needed to install the Multi-Gateway Solution Software for converting the EDI information into record type structure and to handle the arriving data with respect to data entry and editing procedure applied by HCSO.
20.At present three big businesses having many local kind of activity units provide the data linked to five different surveys on EDI. Considering the number of the data suppliers and the surveys the working system can be improved easily. The HCSO is planning to install a high-capacity EDI server at the end of this year.