The National Statistical Institute (NSI) and the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation between the two institutions. The document was signed by the President of the NSI, Assoc. Prof. Atanas Atanasov, PhD, and the President of the BIA, Dobri Mitrev. The event was also attended by the two Vice Presidents of the BIA, Maria Mincheva and Stanislav Popdonchev, as well as the Director of the Multi-Domain Statistics, Methodology and Cooperation Directorate at the NSI, Antoaneta Ilkova.
The Memorandum regulates the deepening of the partnership between the two institutions with the aim of improving the use of data in policy making and action planning at the national, sectoral, and company levels.
NSI and BIA have as a common goal to plan and implement activities in the following directions:
- Organizing and participating in events for the exchange of information, experience, knowledge, ideas and good practices through joint workshops, seminars, forums, conferences, round tables and other media appearances to achieve common goals;
- Ensuring the participation of BIA representatives in advisory councils to the President of the NSI;
- Provision of statistics to the BIA, as the nationally representative employers' organization, on its participation in social dialogue and in various cooperation bodies.
During the meeting, Assoc. Prof. Atanasov mentioned the following: ‘Data collection is a two-way process in which business is an extremely important partner, so I am extremely grateful and hopeful by signing today's Memorandum with BIA.’ He added that in its work, the NSI strictly follows the 16 principles of the European Statistics Code of Practice to ensure the quality and reliability of statistical data.
The BIA's President, Dobri Mitrev, pointed out that the accuracy of the data and their uniform format are extremely important for the business forecasts, so they highly appreciate the readiness of the NSI to cooperate and provide this important information, which would be beneficial for every Bulgarian and foreign enterprise that wants to invest in Bulgaria.
During the event, the management of the NSI and the BIA also discussed the development of the ‘Single Entry Point’ project, the need for an established methodology for the average wage, which will determine the minimum wage, as well as the preparation of the NSI in the process of introducing the euro.
