The paper describes the procedures currently used by the Bank of Italy to produce seasonally adjusted time series on bank credit disseminated to the public.
The new procedure is based on the X-13ARIMA-SEATS model and is consistent with the one adopted by the ECB and other main National Central Banks in the ESCB. Compared with the approach previously used by the Bank of Italy (TRAMO-SEATS), the new methodology provides greater versatility of implementation and better interpretability of results. Finally, the paper shows how the new methodology can also be applied to credit series disaggregated by sector of economic activity (NACE) and by purpose of lending.
