The FOI has signed a contract with the Commission of the European Union to conduct its industry survey under the Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer Surveys.
This EU programme is designed to gather information on the state of the economies of the member states to be able to compare their business cycles for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) management purposes.
While conventional econometric models of the economy perform reasonably well when the economy is on a stable growth trend, they do not perform so well in signalling changes in direction.
So business and consumer surveys are a necessary complement to quantitative statistical surveys, from which they differ in methods and use, and they have become an indispensable tool in the EMU economic surveillance process, as well as for general economic policy purposes.
The EU industry survey that the FOI will be conducting for the Commission serves to establish trends in the outlook of manufacturing industry in Malta. It consists of a few simple questions that will be sent every month to a selected sample of Malta-based business operators. Respondents may submit their completed survey through the newly set up Business Surveys section on the FOI Website (www.foi.org.mt), by e-mail, fax or post.
The FOI has long experience in conducting industry surveys. Besides carrying out various ad hoc surveys on different subjects from time to time, the federation has been conducting a regular six-monthly survey, the Industry Trends Survey, since 1982. Incidentally, the FOI had modelled its survey on that of the EU.
The similarity between the current FOI survey and that of the EU was one of the main reasons why the FOI last year decided to submit a proposal to conduct the survey of the EU. The FOI has regularly been expressing concern at the fact that industry is being asked to fill in far too many survey forms. By conducting the EU survey the FOI intends to eventually phase out its own survey.
The FOI is now encouraging other organisations that are gathering such information from industry to join the FOI survey mechanism. This will definitely be more cost effective. It will ensure commonality of the information gathered and it will certainly reduce the burden on respondents.
The federation has been gearing itself up over the last few months to be in a position to efficiently conduct the EU survey. For this purpose it has engaged Kevin Caruana, an Economics graduate, who will focus primarily on the survey. Mr Caruana has just returned from a two-week traineeship in the European Commission on the subject.
The federation took this initiative in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers who have been working closely with the FOI to set up the survey organisation and to act as the survey advisors on an ongoing basis. The FOI believes that the involvement of PricewaterhouseCoopers in this initiative will add value to the survey and its respondents.
The first survey in this series was launched in the first week of this month. Replies will be received up to the middle of each month, after which the data will be aggregated and forwarded to the Commission. The FOI guarantees that all data collected will be treated confidentially.
The FOI urges all firms that received the survey questionnaire to participate in the survey.