Innovatory Changes in calculating Business Confidence Index of Industrial Enterprises

In April 2023, Rosstat made amendments to the methodology for calculating Business Confidence Index of industrial enterprises. The methodology was updated in accordance with the UN Guidelines on Producing Leading, Composite and Sentiment Indicators and ensures international comparability of the calculated indicators.

Rosstat has been calculating Business Confidence Index since 1998, which is considered an important and promising business climate indicator and allows the evaluation of current trends in economic activities. Rosstat has been regularly assessing opportunities for development of the index calculation methodology.

In 2023, it was decided to introduce a set of innovatory changes:

• A new system for weighting the results of business activity surveys is now used. The system allows adjusting the contribution of each organization’s response to the overall indicator value depending on the number of its employees, thereby increasing the importance attached to the responses of large organizations;
• All the components used for the calculation of the Business Confidence Index are now subject to seasonal adjustment;
• In order to assess the time series of the indicators calculated applying the new methodology, retrospective calculations were carried out using the data collected since 2017;
• Two new business activity indicators – the business climate indicator and the business barrier index – were included in the publication for the first time.

The business climate indicator gives the opportunity to assess the level and change of demand in the domestic and foreign markets as well as production prospects and shifts in the economy.

The business barrier index reflects the aggregate entrepreneurial estimates of the barriers limiting activities of their enterprises.

Information on the business activity of organizations in Russia in April 2023 is available here.