Statistical Office of Montenegro - Monstat s1

STATISTICAL OFFICE OF MONTENEGRO - MONSTAT

After the independence of Montenegro in June 2006, many institutions of the Republic of Montenegro, which until then depended on the State Union ones, received the new status in terms of autonomy and responsibility. That was the case with the Statistical Office of Montenegro – MONSTAT. This important step towards EU accession puts additional pressure on MONSTAT to produce statistics standardized with the European Statistical System. Not only statistics has a special chapter in the SAA, but data about economic and social situation in Montenegro will be used by the EU as essential monitoring tools of the general progress of the country to meet its requirements. When SAA will enter into force, Montenegro will have to meet specific obligations in terms of quality and timeliness of harmonized data. In order to fulfil all obligations required by the independence and SAA, MONSTAT needs assistance in complete institutional reorganization. MONSTAT has to strengthen its management, engage new human and financial resources, endow new activities and form new departments. Formally, the statistical system can rely on a rather sound framework having a specific Law on statistics, a Master Plan, Annual plans for 2007 and 2008 as well as a Council of Statistics that is operational since the beginning of 2006. The adoption of the Law on Statistics and the Statistical System was preceded by necessity of the new independent country. Since MONSTAT was transformed from republic to national Office, it assumed new responsibilities for building and coordinating of a sustainable National Statistical System. The current Law on Statistics prepared and enacted with international technical assistance is similar to relevant laws in other European countries with some local specifics. Montenegro went very fast in the adoption of its Law on Statistics and in its establishing of a Statistical Council. This body is working with high enthusiasm and is considered as an important instrument to support MONSTAT in achieving some sustainable progress. Although Montenegro is a small country, the resources necessary for the work of MONSTAT do not have to be proportional to the size of the country. Having in mind the process of European integrations and the role of statistics in the process, it is obvious that MONSTAT needs sufficient number of persons to harmonize its work with all EU requirements. Although there is an evident increase of employees in MONSTAT by employing young and educated personnel, the increase is insufficient to meet all national and international statistical requirements. The Minister of Finance expressed his awareness of lack of human resources and working space in MONSTAT and promised full support of MoF to MONSTAT in overcoming these problems but also in strengthening cooperation with relevant MoF departments and other institutions in the system where MoF can intervene to ease MONSTAT’s access to existing data sources and urge other partners to produce additional data needed by MONSTAT. A Government decision should regulate new organizational structure for MONSTAT, in accordance with the large number of new and complex activities in the new playing role of MONSTAT after the important step towards EU accession - signing of SAA - to produce statistics standardized with the European Statistical System. Good sign of interest for statistics from the Government of Montenegro allowed an increase of the number of employees. Therefore, it would be very important and necessary that the Government of Montenegro gives appropriate attention to the development of MONSTAT as the official statistics is the only one fully comparable at international level and the only one that will be recognized and used by EU counterparts in all phases of negotiation process. Aiming to increase the quality of data MONSTAT is, in cooperation with foreign experts, working on the improvement and harmonization of surveys with EU standards, as well as on introducing new surveys in compliance with ESS. In order to achieve the goal, MONSTAT started with the introduction of sample based surveys in order to reduce burden on respondents and to receive the necessary quality of data. For some surveys, such as the Statistical Business Register, MONSTAT uses the data from administrative sources. Although the quality of existing data from administrative sources is good, there should be constant work on the quality of data from administrative registers and their harmonization with the needs of MONSTAT. So far, MONSTAT benefited from sustained support from EU through the following: - Global assessment of the statistical system (2000) - CARDS 2001 national programme: technical assistance in Population Census and various specific fields such as ICT, economic statistics, basic methodology of statistics, organization and management and procurement of ICT and other equipment; - CARDS 2004 national programme: Develop GDP compilations to the maximum extent possible compatible with ESA95 methodology and standards; - CARDS 2005 national programme: hiring a short-term expert to respond to the request of the Minister of Finance (see above) - CARDS 2001 regional programme: Participation at regional level on pilot projects regarding PPP, external trade and business statistics; - CARDS 2003 regional programme: Participation at regional level on pilot projects regarding PPP, external trade, migration and labour market statistics.

It must be noted that regional programmes also include a horizontal component of general know-how transfer and exchange of experiences between all participants. MONSTAT is at the moment the beneficiary of a very important programme of technical assistance financed by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The main subjects of this assistance include structural business statistics, statistical business register and the sample survey methodology. MONSTAT is also the beneficiary of temporary aimed assistance of UN organizations, World Bank, IMF etc. In relation to the present assistance, MONSTAT is informed about the cessation of the assistance provided by SIDA, and current national and regional CARDS project will end in the 1st quarter of 2008, which would extremely require additional support from donors to MONSTAT. In order to avoid the possible gap in the donor support to MONSTAT, we sincerely hope that the future IPA project will start immediately after the ending the existing project thus providing the necessary continuity of support. Project Fiche for the mentioned IPA project was prepared in cooperation with EUROSTAT and the expert engaged by EAR upon the request of MoF, in which the following subjects were stated as the key subjects of future assistance: 1. Development of a quality system for key processes in the production of statistics: a. Development of a metadata policy and system. i. -general metadata (concepts, methods, nomenclatures/classifications, indices, database, surveys); ii. -metadata of survey management; iii. -metadata of data entry, verification and editing; b. Development of systems for data-warehouse, treatment and controls of micro and macro data. c. Development of a data dissemination system i. publication program ii. improving and increasing the number of electronic publications; iii. web site redesign d. Improve the enforcement of the statistical infrastructure both in MONSTAT and with relevant external parties. 2. Further harmonisation of economic statistic: a. For National Accounts, further alignment with ESA 95 as well as improvement of the quality and exhaustiveness. b. Ensure that national level cooperation, especially in the compilation of national accounts statistics for the government sector, functions properly. 3. Further improvement of business statistics: a. For short term statistics, assessing the state of play, already implemented surveys and initiating new surveys. b. For tourism statistics, assessment of state of play and identifying recommendations for the implementation of the acquis. Establishment of surveys, in particular for the supply side of tourism development (i.e. arrivals and guest nights spent in hotels etc.).