Background information

This survey was started in Lithuania in accordance with the general coordinated EU program on 1 May 1993. Since then, the survey has been conducted on a monthly basis. Currently, the survey methodology is regulated by the Order No DĮ-10 of the General Director of the Lithuanian Statistics Department (6 January 2022).

This survey covers the manufacturing, construction, trade and services sectors. The objective of the survey is to collect data (opinions) from enterprises on the economic changes and to estimate confidence indicators which describe changes and trends of specific economic activities (including employment forecasts).

Content of measure

This survey of business trends collects the opinions of companies’ executives regarding past, present and future changes in their economic activities and expectations. The population of the survey covers all joint stock companies, private limited companies, state and municipal enterprises, branches of foreign companies, individual companies and cooperative companies which have carried out their economic activity in the reporting year.

Different questions on the current economic situation and changes (including future changes) in the enterprise are posed to the enterprises according to the type of their economic activity. The collected information covers a range of indicators, including previous/current/future (forecasted) turnover, production demand, prices, competitiveness and number of employees.

The manager of the enterprise is the person in charge to fill in the questionnaire. Results from this survey are used to build four confidence indicators which are published on a monthly basis, in particular:

• the retail trade confidence indicator. It is an arithmetic average of the balances of a change in the business situation, future tendency for the business situation, and inverted stocks.
• the confidence indicator for services. It is an arithmetic average of the balances of a change in the business situation, change in demand for services, and future tendency for demand.
• the confidence indicator for industry. It is an arithmetic average of the balances of the level of demand for production, future tendency for production, and inverted stocks.
• the confidence indicator for construction. It is an arithmetic average of the balances of demand for construction works and the forecast number of employees.

Balance is the indicator obtained by taking the difference between the percentages of favourable and unfavourable answers given to questions in a survey questionnaire. Balances can take values from –100 when all respondents choose extreme negative answers, to +100 when all respondents choose the positive answer option. Balance changes over different months reflect tendency of the phenomenon.

The truncation method is used for sampling. The sample size is approximately 3,400 respondents selected from undertakings which are actually operating in the reporting period.

Use of measure

Results of the survey are regularly presented in the mass media and are rather visible for businesses, policymakers and society. They are used as a source of information regarding businesses' expectations and possible developments in the economy and the labour market. It provides the opportunity to evaluate possible business developments and the attitudes of companies’ executives regarding employment figures in different economic sectors. However, in practice, this survey is rarely used in the context of anticipating change and restructuring. Moreover, this survey is hardly ever used in pursuing economic and social policy in Lithuania.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Does not apply to workers	Applies to all businesses	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
National government Company / Companies EU (Council, EC, EP) Public support service providers	National funds

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	No involvement	No involvement
Form	Not applicable	Not applicable

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• No involvement
• Main level of involvement: Unknown

Involvement

Unknown

Views and reactions

Unknown

Sectors and occupations

This case is not occupation-specific.

Sources

• 06 January 2022: Methodology of Business trends survey (osp.stat.gov.lt)
• 30 September 2022: Results of the business trends survey in Lithuania (September 2022) (osp.stat.gov.lt)