prijava
SARAJEVO, February 16 (FENA) - Head of the EU Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina and EU Special Representative Ambassador Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, on the occasion of the start of the new twinning project "Support to the Reform of the Statistics System in Bosnia and Herzegovina", said that statistics is extremely important for any country that wants to become an EU member, because reliable statistics data are crucial to determining the kind of reforms that need to be implemented.
Wigemark expressed satisfaction that the EU has the opportunity to once again support the state and entity statistics agencies that play a significant role in collecting and processing data for the whole of BiH.
As he said, within this twinning project, Denmark, which is an EU member, will share with BiH its own experiences, as well as the experience of working within the European framework with EUROSTAT, which will contribute to the enhancement of the capacities of the BiH statistics bureaus and agencies.
Head of the EU Delegation stressed that the statistical data are relevant both in the context of the recently presented EU Strategy for the Western Balkans.
"It is important to have reliable indicators that will enable long-term planning of future measures and what the Strategy brings is in fact the planning," he said.
He emphasized that it is crucial to have good and reliable statistics and that this is a matter that should not be politicized.
Director of the BiH Statistics Agency and the Twinning Project M anager Velimir Jukić reminded that this type of project is in fact the assistance of the European Union to the countries that are on their way to become members in terms of adopting European standards and the EU acquis.
He stressed that this project is significant for BiH as it will produce results in several areas through the realization of project goals and that in the area of national data it is expected to produce indicators at the level of regions, which will show how well the regions are developed individually.
Among other things, the BiH statistics business register will also be improved through this project, which is important not only for the economy, but also for the institutions and professionals.
Director of the FBiH Statistics Institute Emir Kremić said that following the implementation of this project, BiH and the country's statistics institutions are expected to start implementing the verdicts of the Constitutional Court if BiH.
He referred to the verdict from 2009 of the BiH Constitutional Court, which has not been implemented yet.
“This is the law that deals with unification of the statistics system in BiH, which should be an umbrella law, because we know that statistics play an important role in all issues when we talk about the EU Road Map for BiH launched 15 years ago,” said Kremić.
He concluded that Bosnia and Herzegovina's statistics would play an important role in future progress towards the EU.
The Twinning Project "Supporting to the Reform of the Statistics System in BiH" is funded by the European Union in the amount of EUR 1.5 million, from the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA 2015). The project will be implemented by Denmark's statistics institutions during the 24-month period.
(FENA) S. R.
