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Concepts and definitions

Commodity

Commodities refer to tangible or intangible instruments that directly (consumables) or indirectly (capital goods) satisfy people's needs.

Tangible assets comprise both goods, as well as materials and supplies. Services are intangible assets. (Other intangible assets can be, for example, data in digital format or the production right of some tangible asset).

Commodity production (industrial output) also includes so-called industrial services. Industrial services include remodelling, processing, working and other such finishing, maintenance, repairs and installations. Industrial services have their own PRODCOM service titles in the commodity statistics' PRODCOM product name register.

Some industrial services are, however, classified as non-industrial services in the Standard Industrial Classification (TOL), for example, maintenance and repair of vehicles and repair and maintenance of office equipment and computers, so they do not belong to the inquiry on manufacturing commodities. This also applies to design and programming of software, as well as consulting and other computer and related activities.

Legal unit

A legal unit is a corporation, or an organisation registered for conducting business. A legal unit is identified with a Business ID.

Legal units are, for example, limited companies, private practitioners of trade, co-operative societies, state-owned companies and foundations.

Production nomenclature

Since 1997, the classification of commodity headings referred to in the statistics on manufacturing commodities has been based on the PRODCOM classification of industrial production of the European Union updated annually. The PRODCOM classification contains 8-digit product headings.

It does not include all product groups, for which reason it is supplemented with additional national headings. Some of the PRODCOM headings are also divided into national subheadings. The national product heading codes comprise 10 digits. The first four digits of the codes correspond to the code of the standard industrial classification of the European Communities (NACE Rev. 2) and thus to the first four digits of Statistics Finland's industrial classification TOL 2008. The first six digits of the code correspond to the Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) of the European Communities.

Sold output

In the statistics on manufacturing commodities, sold output refers to the output manufactured by an enterprise or its establishment and sold outside the enterprise during the calendar year irrespective of the date of production.

Sold output also includes sale from stock. The value or quantity of sold output does not include selling of such goods that have been sold as such, without further processing, to other enterprises (merchandise).

Total production

The volume of total production refers to the output manufactured by the enterprise or its establishment during the calendar year. It comprises sold production and production intended to be sold, output produced for stock as well as output that either is being, will be or has been reprocessed by the enterprise. Data on total production for a calendar year are inquired, in addition to data on sold production, only in the case of separately defined commodities. Only the volume and not the value of total production is usually reported.

Data on total production are inquired as complementary data on those production/commodity headings on which the data on sold production (i.e. sales) are not thought to describe actual manufacturing sufficiently.

Volume of total production = the volume of output produced during the statistical reference year irrespective of whether it is produced for sale or further processing within the same legal unit.

If total production is inquired from the product heading concerned, it is inquired either for the needs of Eurostat or Statistics Finland.