Country experience: Portugal
14.412. A separate alternative breakdown of travel into types of goods and services is recommended by BPM6 and MSITS 2010. Box 14.8 shows the level of product detail required as supplementary breakdowns for travel according to BPM6 and EBOPS 2010, integrated with additional requirements to provide the necessary level of detail for other statistical domains and respond to mode 2 information needs.
14.413. The forthcoming payment card database can provide important information for meeting those new requirements, using the activity sector code of the goods and service provider. For payments made in Portugal with cards issued abroad, the NACE category of the point of sale (POS) owner is available, while for payments made abroad with cards issued by resident institutions, the merchant category code (MCC) of the POS owner is provided. Those variables are used as proxies. A correspondence table between the NACE or MCC codes and the different travel expenditures on goods and types of services must be developed. Furthermore, to identify local transport services, other than rental services, separately from international transport services, the border survey will be used.
14.414. In addition, when travel expenditures are prepaid to resident travel agencies, in terms of both travel credits and debits, the direct reporting by such companies will provide the breakdown by good and type of service for both travel credits and debits. That information complements payment card data. For the same breakdown of payments made to non-resident travel agencies, on the debits side, the border survey is being considered as a possible data source. In terms of travel expenditures on goods, BPM6 recommends the acquisition of valuables, consumer durable goods and other consumer purchases for own use or to give away acquired by travellers in excess of customs thresholds to be registered under general merchandise and not under travel. To identify the acquisition of such goods, different variables from the payment card database must be combined, namely, restricting the activity classification of the goods provider to jewellery, art, cars and electronic goods, and considering a minimum threshold for the value of the operation.