Economy and prices

The balance of payments is a statistical statement that systematically summarizes, for a specific time period, the transactions of an economy with the rest of the world. This statistic is a reference tool for the determination of the economic and monetary policy.

Current economic analysis is based on economic indicators and modelling. Indicators include business and opinion surveys, national accounts, balance of payments, prices and wages, labour market statistics (employment, unemployment), public finances and statistics on energy (consumption, production) and on the related emissions. The analysis aims to establish an economic diagnosis based on the main trends observed. Modelling simulates the behaviour of economic variables in a macro-economic framework using econometric tools. The objective of modelling is to better understand the functioning of the Luxembourg’s economy and to predict its future evolution.

According to the European system of accounts (ESA2010, §2.111), the general government sector (S.13) consists of institutional units, which are non-market producers whose output is intended for individual and collective consumption, and are financed by compulsory payments made by units belonging to other sectors, and institutional units principally engaged in the redistribution of national income and wealth. Government finance statistics are of particular importance in the sense that the capital account balance (net lending/borrowing) is used by the European Union as the legal definition of the government deficit/surplus in the context of the excessive deficit procedure and the convergence criteria, which are a public deficit below 3% of GDP and public debt below 60% of GDP. 

National accounts describe all economic flows relating to production, income redistribution, consumption and capital accumulation in a national economy. The accounts by branches and by institutional sectors provide a whole panoply of synthetic quantities for the analysis of economic activity. The Luxembourg national accounts are established in accordance with the ESA2010 “European System of Accounts”, a harmonized system common to the countries of the European Union. The tables show all the national accounts' data currently available for Luxembourg since 1995.

National accounts established according to the European System of Accounts include a supplementary table on pensions, also known as supplementary table 29, regrouping information on assets of households in relation with accrued-to-date pension rights in social insurance. In the case of Luxembourg, it covers the general pension scheme of the private sector as well as the special pension schemes of the public sector.

With its limited scope, the supplementary table 29 is not suited for drawing conclusions on the sustainability of pension systems, nor for interpreting its content as implicit government debt.

In Luxembourg, the establishment of consumer price indices is issued monthly. It is presented in the form of a chain index, the weighting of which is adjusted every year to take account of modifications in households' consumer habits. Calculated for the twelve months of a given year compared to the month of December of the previous year, it is published on base 100 in 2015 for economic analysis purposes, and on base 100 at 1st January 1948 for the purposes of the sliding wage scale.

This part brings together the essential retrospective series of the consumer price index, the detailed results of the current index (Base 100 in 2015), and also various series of absolute prices.