Azernews.Az

By Aygul Salmanova

Baku hosted the event dedicated to the completion of the twinning project "Support to the State Statistical Committee in Modernization of the National Statistics System of the Republic of Azerbaijan in line with EU Standards" on November 24.

The event was attended by a number of officials including EU ambassador to Azerbaijan Kestutis Jankauskas, Azerbaijani Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev, Azerbaijani Minister of Labor and Social Protection Salim Muslumov, chairman of the State Statistics Committee Tahir Budagov.

Jankauskas made remarks at the event and stressed on the future cooperation areas between the two countries as well as the issues to be discussed at the Eastern Partnership Summit.

The new areas of further cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan will be determined during the Eastern Partnership Summit, EU ambassador said.

"The Eastern Partnership Summit will kick off in Brussels today,” he said. “The events that have occurred over the past two years will be discussed within the summit. Moreover, the current problems will be touched upon and further areas of cooperation will be determined there.”

The diplomat noted that the EU and Azerbaijan are implementing another statistics project and stressed that the new project is being worked out.

Touching upon the completed twinning project, Jankauskas stressed that this project allowed to bring the national statistics system of Azerbaijan in line with European standards.

“The EU is ready and pleased to support Azerbaijan in achieving a reliable, comprehensive statistics system to diversify economy and implement road maps,” Jankauskas said.

Mustafayev was also among the officials addressing the event. The minister spoke about the amount of EU investments made in Azerbaijan.

The EU has invested $21 billion in the Azerbaijani economy over the past 10 years, the minister said.

"Thus, 24 percent accounted for investments made by the EU countries,” he said. “At present, more than 1,400 European companies operate in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has signed a memorandum on strategic partnership with eight EU countries."

The minister also stressed that the EU is the main trade partner of Azerbaijan.

"The EU share in the total trade turnover of Azerbaijan amounted to 35 percent in 2016,” the minister said. “Taking into account the results of this year, this figure has not decreased and remained at the level of 35 percent."

The event was further addressed by Salim Muslumov who talked about the employment statistics.

The minister said that Azerbaijan should improve employment statistics and added that the reforms carried out in the national statistics system helped Azerbaijan create a law on ‘Compulsory insurance against unemployment’, which will come into force on January 1, 2018.

"From now on, this law will allow us to distinguish the concepts of the unemployed and job seekers," he said. “At present, we must find out unemployed, job seekers and amend the law ‘On employment’.”

“Today we do not have centralized data on unemployment,” the minister said. “So we should create employment statistics in Azerbaijan in accordance with European standards.”

Commenting on statistics system of Azerbaijan, chairman of the State Statistics Committee Tahir Budagov told reporters that the national system fully complies with international standards.

This is also evidenced by the report on global assessment of the national statistics system of Azerbaijan, conducted by the European Statistical Bureau (Eurostat), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), said Budagov.

He noted that 35 highly qualified experts were involved in the project’s implementation.

“Moreover, 64 specialists of the State Statistics Committee took part in the project. International experts paid 37 visits to Azerbaijan, and meanwhile, local specialists participated in 14 foreign trainings,” said Budagov.

The EU allocated 1.2 million euros for the improvement of the national statistics system of Azerbaijan within the twinning project.

The project consisted of five components, namely, the improvement of management of statistics data and dissemination of statistics information through a geographic information system, as well as statistics data on income and living standards, etc.

The main partners of the project were Germany’s Federal Statistical Office and Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute. Moreover, the project was supported by the Netherlands, Slovenia, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Croatia.

According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and the EU countries amounted to $5.67 billion for 10 months of 2017, almost $4.2 billion of that amount accounted for the export of Azerbaijani products to the EU countries.

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