EU helping Serbia's statistical system with EUR 3.5 million

Through a donation within the project called “Strengthening the Serbian Statistical System by Upgrading Methodologies and Standards and by the Appliance of Good Practice”, the EU will continue to provide support to the statistical system of Serbia, it was said at the conference held in Belgrade on September 8.

The project is financed by the EU with around EUR 3.5 million. It started in April and will last until December 2017. It is being implemented by the consortium headed by the German company GOPA.

The aim is to further develop and upgrade the system in line with the requirements within the process of bringing it in line with the European statistical system.

As representatives of the Statistical Office of Serbia said, the project focuses on further development of information and communications system of the Office, upgrade of the system of national accounts related to supply and use tables, and upgrade of the existing and development of new sustainable development indicators.

The director of Eurostat in charge of international cooperation, Peter Everers, said that several IPA programs were in progress, with the aim of bringing the system in line with European standards. He said that the legal and institutional environment was changing and that it was important to take care of the quality of data.

– We need to be impartial, independent and to strengthen the laws on statistics and also to make all sources available – he said and added that data gathering is no longer statisticians' main task, but that they also acted as information providers.

The director of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), Miladin Kovacevic, said that the implementation of the project was a step forward in modernizing the official statistics and everything envisioned by the chapter 18, i.e. defining standards with the EU. He pointed to the importance and usefulness of the EU's support to the strengthening of Serbia's statistical capacities.

Within the same project, the EU donated around EUR 600,000 to the SORS for the new infrastructure of the data processing center, the network infrastructure, servers, computers and other peripheral equipment. It was pointed out that the donation was highly important to the implementation of the project and future operations of the SORS.

Republički zavod za statistiku

GOPA Consultants Njemačka

EUROSTAT

Eurostat Luxembourg

Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

SORS

project Strengthening the Serbian Statistical System by Upgrading Methodologies and Standards and by the Appliance of Good Practice

GOPA Germany

European statistical system

Eurostat

Peter Everers

IPA program

Miladin Kovacevic