The COVID-19 crisis has had an impact on turnover in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the same period the year before, due to the new lockdown measures, from mid-October in the accommodation and food service activities and from beginning November in other sectors (e.g. the activities of travel agencies, tour operators and other reservation services have almost completely ceased due to non-essential travels being discouraged), and due to the closing of non-essential shops in November. Almost 60 % of economic sectors included in this statistic registered a turnover decrease. The most significant turnover decreases were registered in the sector ‘N79 Travel agency, tour operator and other reservation service and related activities’, in air transport (H51), in the sector ‘Accommodation and food service activities’ and in the sector ‘J59 Motion picture, video and television programme production, sound recording and music publishing activities’. However, in just over 40 % of economic sectors, the turnover increased. This is the case, for example, in the sector ‘H53 Postal and courier activities’ and in the sectors ‘J62 Computer programming, consultancy and related activities’ and ‘J63 Information service activities’.
This statistic gives the turnover indices for a number of sectors specified by Eurostat: the wholesale trade and a number of services such as transport, accommodation and food service activities, ICT, advertising and market research. The sectors are divided according to the 2008 NACE classification and Eurostat's specifications. Consequently, indices are also available for some codes at a more detailed level (e.g. G46) and other codes are brought together (e.g. M69 and M702). The indices per year give an overview of the evolution of the turnover for a particular sector during the last few years. The reference year is 2015. The quarterly indices reflect the evolution during a given year and can also be used to make year-on-year comparisons of a particular quarter. This way, they make it possible to detect cyclical changes. These indices are gross indices, but the user can create himself a table also showing the seasonally-adjusted indices and the trend. The last 2 years should still be considered as provisional, and can still be revised due to late vat returns or derogations.