The Intrastat system was applied in Bulgaria in 2007 – the year of the accession to the European Union.
Despite the fact that Intrastat enables significant burden reduction in comparison to customs clearance, it is considered as the most burdensome area of statistics. Therefore, since its introduction, the Intrastat system has been subject to numerous discussions and initiatives at political and technical level.
In 2012 Eurostat presented a new approach for data collection and compilation of intra-EU trade statistics, the so-called SIMSTAT (Single Market Statistics) proposal. It aims at setting up a permanent and sustainable solution which is able to address both the burden and quality targets.
The Simstat proposal is built around two leading principles: 1) considerable reduction of the respondents’ burden by eliminating the minimum coverage requirement simplification of the reporting requirements for Member States on the Intra-EU arrivals side by removing the minimum coverage requirement 2) creation of additional data source by making the exchange of micro data in Intra-EU dispatches mandatory.
The overall objective of the “Modernising Intrastat” project is to explore the opportunity for implementation of Simstat in the Bulgarian national practice.
The specific objective of the project is to produce the first appraisal of Simstat proposal by placing an emphasis on the problems and weaknesses identified during the project and the consequences to the data collection and compilation systems.
The project duration is 15 months, ending in March 2015.
