NSI successfully concludes the first twinning project with the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the results of which were presented at the closing conference, held on 10-11 November 2011 in Baku.
The project value of ? 900,000 was realized by a consortium between the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (lead partner) and the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria (junior partner), with the participation of experts from the Czech Republic and Lithuania. The main objective was to support the upgrade of official statistics of Azerbaijan by introducing closely aligned to European standards in the field of national accounts, non-observed economy, business statistics and producer price index. In this project for the first time experts from NSI began to provide technical assistance to other countries within the framework of the EU Twinning Programme. Six leading NSI experts were involved in the implementation of the project and successfully accomplished 32 missions.
Heads of the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria, the Czech Statistical Office and the Statistical Office of Lithuania took part in the conference. They discussed opportunities for expanding cooperation and technical assistance to the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan in the implementation of European standards in social statistics, quality management and use of geographic information systems. During the two-day conference in Baku, the achieved results and prospects for the future development of the project’s components were presented. The President of NSI made a brief overview of the Bulgarian contribution to the project.
On the Bulgarian side their work on the project presented Ms. Elka Atanasova, Director of “Macroeconomic Statistics” and MS junior project leader, Ms. Diana Yancheva, Director of “Business Statistics” and coordinator of Component 3 “Business Statistics”, and the resident twinning adviser on the project in Baku Mr. Sergey Tsvetarsky, who talked about his daily work with the Azerbaijani colleagues.
The specific results, achieved under the contract after the completion of the twinning project are related to the harmonization of national accounts, the development and implementation of estimates for non-observed economy, improving the quality of business statistics and the business register, increasing the quality of calculating the producer price index for the compilation of Supply and Use Tables.
The twinning project will be finalized in February, when the last meeting of the Steering Committee will be held in Baku.
