A delegation of the National Statistical Institute, headed by its President – Assoc. Prof. Mariana Kotzeva was on official visit to Moscow and Baku. Meetings were held in the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation (ROSSTAT) and the State Statistical Committee (SSC) of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Mrs. Kotzeva was accompanied by Mr. Mustafa Zinal – NSI Deputy President and Mr. Veselin Vassilev – Secretary General.

From 22 to 25 April 2010, the delegation visited ROSSTAT at the invitation of Mr. Alexander Surinov - Head. During the visit issues were discussed, such as: further development of the cooperation between the two institutions in the field of foreign trade statistics; application of GIS in dissemination of statistical information; on-line submission of statistical data. A meeting was also held with Mr. Vladimir Sokolin – Chairman of the Interstate Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

After the visit to Moscow, from 25 to 28 April 2010, the Bulgarian delegation participated in a tripartite meeting of the Heads of the National Statistics of Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and Germany. The host of the forum was the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The tripartite meeting in Baku was the first of its kind in this format and was held within the framework of the two-year Twinning Project AZ08/ENP-PCA/FI/06 ‘Support to the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SSC) to reach European standards in national accounts, non-observed economy, business statistics and producer price index’ launched in the end of 2009. The Twinning is to be implemented by a consortium between the Federal Statistical Office of Germany and the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria.

During the meeting a Joint Declaration of Intent of the Statistical Offices of Azerbaijan and Germany, as well as a two-year Action Plan within the framework of the Agreement on Cooperation between NSI and SSC were signed. The Plan includes concrete measures for exchange of information and expertise between NSI and SSC in the field of statistics of income and living conditions, households, social inclusion/ exclusion, labour costs of employers, agriculture, trade, services and tourism, and in using GIS in the regional statistics.