Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 22
By Sara Israfilbayova – Trend:
The national statistical system is being improved in Azerbaijan with the support of the EU, Tahir Budagov, chairman of the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan, told journalists during the presentation of the project titled "Support to the State Statistical Committee in Modernisation of the National Statistics System in line with European standards" in Baku, Trend reports.
He noted that work on bringing some fields of statistics of Azerbaijan closer to the international standards has already been completed, as part of two twinning projects.
“We appealed to the UN Economic Commission for Europe for the evaluation of these projects,” he said.
According to Budagov, an audit of the statistical system was conducted from September 2016 to February 2017 in Azerbaijan.
He added that international experts prepared a report, in which they highly appreciated the country's statistical system.
"We also decided to evaluate the production processes and signed a contract with the Switzerland’s SGS company, which provides independent expertise services – and Azerbaijan became the first among the CIS countries to receive the ISO 9001: 2015 standard," said Budagov.
Speaking about the "Support to the State Statistical Committee in Modernisation of the National Statistics System in line with European standards" project, he noted that 31 expert missions are planned to take part in it, along with holding 5 seminars and 5 trainings.
In turn, Vilija Lapeniene, Director General of the Lithuanian Department of Statistics, told reporters that Azerbaijan and Lithuania have had a long cooperation in the field of statistics, and expressed hope for the continuation of this cooperation.
"Our main task is to share experience in this area with Azerbaijan and help achieve international standards," she said.
Lapeniene noted that Azerbaijan is surely moving in this direction.
“Considering that standards change every year, we should continue our cooperation,” she said.
According to Lapeniene, two missions of Azerbaijani specialists in the field of statistics are expected to visit Lithuania in the near future.