The fifth phase of the Twinning project “Support to the State and Entity Statistical Institutions”, funded by the EU, closed with the signing of the “Strategy for the Development of Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2020” in Sarajevo on 16 December 2013.
The project was of key importance for the development of the Statistical System in BiH, especially in the area of business statistics, but also for strengthening and improving the institutional capacity and cooperation of statistical institutions in the country .
„Accurate, reliable and timely official statistics are essential for planning and monitoring the process of transition and reform. Accordingly, the long-term goal of the EU is to support the statistical system of BiH on its way to the European Union, and one of the positive developments in this direction was the Twinning project for which the EU has allocated 1.3 million EUR. The EU will continue to support the strengthening of statistical institutions in BiH. Areas that need further improvements are sectoral statistics, business and agricultural statistics, and we believe that it is important to adopt the Law on agricultural census. For this census the EU planned assistance for BiH in the amount of 1 million EUR”, said Holger Schroeder, Head of Operations at the Delegation of the EU to BiH, at the closing conference.
The project lasted for 27 months and resulted in adoption of a Strategy for the Development of Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2020; it was signed by the Director of BiH Agency for Statistics and directors of the entity statistical agencies.
„Another step towards harmonization of legislation and production statistics with the EU acquis and standards has been made with completion of this project. The most important thing to emphasize today is that we have adopted a common strategy for development of statistics in BiH 2020, which is almost completely harmonized with the EU regulations. An important step for the statistical system in BiH was made with strategy signing”, said Director of BiH Agency for Statistics Zdenko Milinovic.
With expertise from national statistics institutions of Denmark, Italy, Finland, Lithuania and Germany, 70 project activities have been implemented. Most of the activities took place in Sarajevo and Banja Luka while others were organized as study visits to EU countries.
Director of the FBiH Institute of Statistics Hidajeta Bajramovic emphasized satisfaction with the implementation of the project and its results, and added: “This project was successfully carried out and all planned objectives were accomplished despite the fact that we have worked on this project during the period when all three statistical institutions operated at full capacity to prepare and conducting the census.”
Statistical institutions improved statistical business register, structural business statistics, short-term business statistics through this project, and in addition to adoption of key planning document Strategy for the Development of Statistics in BiH 2020, it also adopted the Strategy of Metadata and Dissemination Strategy.
“We have specific products now on which we will continue to work. We used the knowledge and experience of experts from the EU who have helped us and shared their experiences, practices and models and everything that we could incorporate, we have built in, in order to keep up harmonization with EU standards”, said Director of the RS Agency for Statistics Radmila Cickovic.
Twinning project “Support to the State and Entity Statistical Institutions, phase V” is financed by the European Union from the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA 2008) in the amount of 1.3 million Euro. The project was implemented by Statistics Denmark with Germany as junior partner, as well as with Italy, Finland and Lithuania.
