The peer review mission of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which was held at the National Statistical Institute (NSI) in the period 26-28 March 2024, was completed successfully with a unanimous high assessment of the work of the NSI and the progress achieved in the last 12 months. The mission was part of the accession procedure for full membership in the Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy (CSSP), of which the NSI has been an associate member since 2019. The first OECD’s fact-finding mission at NSI took place in March 2023 and aimed to assess the compliance of the national legislation with OECD Legal instrument “Recommendation of the Council on Good Statistical Practice” (OECD/LEGAL/0417).
Participants in the mission on behalf of the OECD again were Ms. Asa Johansson, Deputy Director of the Statistics and Data Directorate, and Mr. Julien Dupont, Accession Coordinator of the CSSP. Experts from the national statistical institutes and central banks from OECD member states also take part in the peer review mission – Ms. Christina Karamichalakou from the Greek Statistical Office (ELSTAT), Mr. Lindsay Beck from Statistics New Zealand, and Ms. Lotte Van Mechelen from the National Bank of Belgium.
The OECD experts praised the quality, depth and scope of Bulgarian statistics. Ms. Johansson said that during the mission, a number of good practices in the work of NSI were identified and will be reflected in the final report, which is to be presented to the CSSP. The cooperation and good coordination between NSI, BNB and the other national statistical authorities was also highly appreciated.
On his part, the President of NSI Assoc. Prof. Atanas Atanasov, PhD thanked the NSI experts and the colleagues from the other national statistical authorities that also took part in the mission, more specifically the “Statistics” Directorate of BNB, the Agrostatistics Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and the “Statistics” Department, GD “Monitoring, Statistics and Control” of the Employment Agency for their professionalism. “I believe that thanks to our joint efforts, Bulgaria will be accepted as a full member of the CSSP, which will be another recognition of our professional independence, impartiality, objectivity, transparency and of the high quality of the official statistics we produce,” Assoc. Prof. Atanasov concluded.
