The new Twinning project “Support to the State and Entity Statistical Institutions, phase VI”, financed by the European Union in the amount of 1 million Euro from the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA 2012), was officially launched today in Sarajevo. This project is continuation of the EU support to the State Statistics Agency and Entity Statistical Institutions in BiH, with aim to harmonise BiH official statistics with European standards.

Severin Strohal, Head of Operations Section for Justice and Home Affairs, Public Administration Reform at the Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina stated in his welcome remarks: “Statistics is vital, as governments, administrations and politicians responsible for policy, economic and social decisions need information both to check the necessity of political initiatives and to monitor the efficiency of implementing these policies. The European Union’s long-term objective is to support BiH Statistical System on its European integration path, and we hope that the project that we are officially launching today will help you to achieve this, particularly in implementing the objectives set in the Strategy 2020 for Development of Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Statistical Strategy for Enlargement countries.”

The Statistical institutions play key role in the development of a sustainable and reliable statistical system as well as in producing data in accordance with the EU acquis. The project will seek to improve national account, financial account, statistical business register, structural business statistics, price indices on construction and services as well social protection statistics.

Slavka Popovic, Deputy Director of the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina stated: “The project is of significant importance for the development of BiH’s Statistical System, especially in the domains of national accounts, financial accounts, business statistics, social protection statistics but also in strengthening institutional capacity of the statistical institutions of the country.”

The project will be implemented in the next two years by the Statistics Denmark as lead partner and Statistics Finland as junior partner as well as expertise from Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania and Latvia.

“Accurate, reliable and timely production of the official statistics is of great importance as statistics can provide crucial information for planning and monitoring the process of transition and reform in BiH,” said Charlotte Juul Hansen, representative of Statistics Denmark and Project Leader.