Cardiff – 16-21 October 2005
Session No 1a
Katja PHILIPP / Matthias NAHM, Federal Statistical Office, Germany
Country Progress Report
1. Organisation
There are two differentsections dealing with the business register (BR) in the Federal StatisticalOffice of Germany (FSO). One is responsible for the current BR (BR95) and the other one for the new BR (BRNew). The sections are located in a division which also comprisesthe sections Co-ordination of Business Statistics and Classifications.The business register database is organised according to the federal structure of Germany, that is byLänder (federal states).The organisation of the 16 statistical offices of the Länder (SOL)is different from the one of the FSO and each has a register ofits own. The FSO gets a copy of each of the 16 registers. The methodological frameworkof these registers is the same and isprovided by the FSO. This means that every measure to change or to maintain the registers is done by one federal program on a regional level of the SOLs.There are federal programs to integrate several administrative files into the BR.
The files come from the tax authorities (VAT files; income and corporation tax files), from the Federal Employment Agency (FEA), from the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI), from the Chambers of Crafts (CC) and from the Federal Finance Office (FFO). The BR95 contains more than 3.1 billion active legal units. The BRNew is still under construction.
2. Issues and problems solved during the past year
At the beginning of 2005, the BR95 was updated with VAT data and with FEA data for the fifth time (in both cases, reference year 2003). After that the third update of the BR95 with the files from the CC as well as the second update with the files from the CCI was completed in about late summer 2005 (in all cases here, reference year 2004). In addition, data from the BR95were published for the second time and again formed the basis for many statistics.
Around the time when we updated the BR 95 with VAT data we had to face some problems in the processing the files from the FFO for the first time. Like the BR95 these files cover parent companies and their subsidiary companies. The main point was that the files from the FFO contained some information in contradiction to the corresponding items in the BR95. Processing by a program was almost impossible to do. So we decided to use the FFO files that were handled manually. For the second stage we tried to improve the procedure to allow a more efficient way of handling. A method was developed to obtainrelevant information to clarify the structure of these units in the BR95. An integrated method includingamongst others the old and the current files from the FFO and also the federal copy of the BR95 is going to start in autumn 2005 preferably.
3. Issues and problems unsolved
The current BR95 is maintained by the SOLs. These business registers are not connected to each other. Within a subproject of a project aiming at an optimised co-operation between the statistical offices in Germany, there is a tool to create a virtually centralised BR95 with decentralised access by the SOLs. At the moment there are still a few SOLs missing to contribute to this virtual register of Germany due to some technical and organisational reasons.
4. Future plans
For the rest of 2005 and for the first half of 2006, the most important activities for the BR95 are the updating of the register with the administrative files mentioned above and the further publishing activities of a wider range of data.
Official statistics of Germany intends to introduce a new business register system called BRNew. One of the main targets is to establish an enlarged unit model. The model is planned to include the enterprise, the local unit and the enterprise group as statistical units, as well as legal units and local legal units. Another main target is to improve the support of statistical surveys and to reduce the burden caused by surveys. It is also intended to create a single database in physical terms with decentralised access by the SOLs. The process of drawing up the BRNew has started with the programming phase in 2005. A first test version should be available presumably at the end of 2005.
The BR plays an important role in improving concentration statistics. In Germany, it is the duty of the Monopolies Commission to monitor the development of concentration. For their concentration analysis the FSO must calculate concentration indices, taking account of enterprise groups.Also for this purpose, information about control, ownership and enterprise groups were bought from a commercial database provider. This information has been delivered at the end of September 2005 in two different files: an enterprise database with information on the legal units belonging to an enterprise group and group heads as well as a database with information on the linkage between these units. These databases will also be used to draw up a satellite register with enterprise groups including a link to the BR95. At the end of 2005 the SOLswill match this database with about 60,000 legal units of NACE sections C, D and F as an excerpt from the BR95 to calculate concentration indices, taking account of enterprise groups. Those concentration results will be delivered to the MonopoliesCommission in January 2006 for the second time.