The Services Producer Price Index (SPPI), formerly the Corporate Services Price Index (CSPI), is a quarterly survey of prices charged for a range of services provided by businesses to other businesses and government.
It is conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and provides a key measure of inflation, alongside other indicators such as the Retail Price Index (RPI) and the Producer Price Index (PPI).
The SPPI is part of an ongoing commitment to improve the scope and quality of statistics for service industries, the fastest growing sector of the economy. It also meets the growing demand, from both within and outside government, for this type of information.
Price indices for business activities from across the service sector, such as freight transport, telecommunications, property rentals and hotels are covered. Indices for areas such as banking services, legal services and accountancy are currently under development and are likely to be introduced progressively over the next few years.
Movements in prices are weighted to reflect the relative importance of transactions in a given year (the 'base year' is currently 2005) and are then aggregated for each of the individual industries within the corporate services sector. The resulting indices show overall price movements, relative to the base year. The top-level SPPI is derived by weighting together the price indices for each industry to estimate price movements in the corporate services sector as a whole.
All available industry-level indices (currently 33 in total), in addition to the top-level SPPI, are released quarterly via the National Statistics website. The results are also summarised in the National Statistics publication, entitled 'Economic & Labour Market Review (ELMR)'.
Main external customers include the Treasury and the Bank of England, who use the information in their assessments of the economy. Within ONS, industry-level SPPI is used to take account of inflation in the calculation of industrial output. The indices are a useful information tool for businesses and also for purposes such as the calculation of price variation clauses in commercial contracts.
For more information, please contact SPPI on 01633 455332 or email ppi@ons.gov.uk
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SPPI results