On September 10, 2024, the director of the State Statistical Office, Dr. Dejan Stankov, participated in the Fourth Session of the Working Group 6, Anti-corruption (Chapter 5 - Public Procurement, Chapter 18 - Statistics and Chapter 32 - Financial Control) organized by The National Convention for the EU in our country (NKEU – MK).
In the framework of the session on "Data we trust: A prerequisite for a stronger economy and effective fight against corruption", the director had his presentation, during which he emphasized that the State Statistical Office has a mission to produce accurate and reliable data, and trust in official statistics is built through a highly professional, impartial attitude towards the work of the Office, based on scientific principles.
"As a small country and a small statistical system, faced with limited resources and funds for the development of statistics, competing priorities and various challenges, currently as Macedonian statisticians we are in a position to monitor the development of the global statistical infrastructure and potentially implement the best practices developed in advanced statistical systems. For that reason, the State Statistical Office highly values the established cooperation with Eurostat and the continuous support from the European Union in the field of statistics. In the next period, we will continue the partnership through the implementation of various projects, with which we will continue the process of developing a sustainable statistical system fully compliant with European statistical standards, which produces reliable and comparable statistical data", Stankov pointed out.
In the process of negotiations with the European Union, Chapter 18 – Statistics is part of the first cluster – Fundamental values, and in the process of the implementation of the Stabilization and Association Agreement, the State Statistical Office has a dual role: on the one hand, to provide reliable, objective , accurate, timely and internationally comparable statistical data, in accordance with the needs in all spheres of SAA, and on the other hand, the Office has the obligation to provide statistical data for the needs of policy makers in the country. At the same time, the data produced by the State Statistical Office are regularly transmitted to international organizations such as Eurostat, IMF, UN and others.
In his presentation, the director referred to the future activities of the Office, which refer to the implementation of projects supported by the European Union, the dissemination of statistical data and the Peer review of the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice.
At the session, in addition to the director, also adressed the national coordinator of NKEU - MK and the president of the European movement, Mrs. Mileva Gjurovska, Mrs. Gonce Jakovlevska from the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation, the governor of the National Bank, Mrs. Anita Angelovska-Bezhoska, the consultant for international development cooperation between the Swedish Statistical Office and the State Statistical Office, Mrs. Eriksson Gotter, as well as professors from universities from the country and abroad, representatives of non-governmental organizations, the World Bank, embassies, etc.
