Harmonised competitiveness indicators

Taking into account that Estonia is a member of the European Monetary Union as of 2011, Eesti Pank stopped the dissemination of the nominal and real effective exchange rates of the Estonian kroon (NEER and REER) on its website. The historical time series of NEER and REER of the Estonian kroon are still available on the website. Similar indices but with different name are calculated and disseminated by the European Central Bank (ECB) for the euro area as whole and separately for all euro area member countries. These indices are called the harmonized competitiveness indicators (HCIs) and they aim to provide consistent and comparable measures of euro area countries' price and cost competitiveness, while being in line with the real effective exchange rates (EERs) of the euro. HCIs are constructed using the same methodology and data sources that are used for euro EERs. While the HCI of a specific country takes into account intra and extra-euro area trade, then euro EERs are based on extra-euro area trade only. Therefore, HCIs and euro EERs reflect different phenomena and are not directly comparable.

The HCIs based on consumer price indices are available on the ECB website in the Statistical Data Warehouse (SDW) in two different sets. The first is based on 20 trading partner countries and the second on 40 trading partner countries. The indices are on monthly basis and published around 15 days after the reference month. The SDW is available at http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/. Please select Economic Concepts / Exchange rates.

In addition to the HCIs based on consumer price indices, the ECB also calculates and disseminates through the SDW quarterly HCIs that are based on GDP deflators and unit labour cost indices.