As is known, the main goal of the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan is to provide all statistical data users with objective and reliable data. In connection with that the SSC continually seeks to carry out reforms and apply new methodologies based on international practice.
But in some cases the opinions expressed in the society and mass-media, regarding the reliability of the offical statistical data provided by the SSC worry us. These negative opinions increased after the acceleration of price increases in the world since 2007, including prices in Azerbaijan, leading to sustained criticism of the SSC's official measure of inflation, the CPI. This in turn has given rise to unfounded distrust among data users and brought into disrepute the conscientious work of the employees of the SSC.
Because of this the SSC decided to seek an independent international examination and assessment of the quality of the CPI conducted by the Committee. For this purpose the State Statistical Committee sought help from the IMF. As a result a CPI data quality assessment mission by Mr. Kimberly D. Zieschang, Head of the Division of the IMF Statistics Department, took place during February 11-22, 2008 in the SSC.
It is necessary to note that Mr. Kimberly D. Zieschang is one of the authors of the methodology on assessment of the quality of CPI, which was prepared jointly by IMF and ILO.
This mission highly commended the way that the SSC measured the CPI and indicated that CPI activities were implemented according to the international standards. The mission made this evaluation based on 22 aspects of the methodology (coverage of the index, data source, correspondence with concepts, transperancy, statistical methods that were applied, reliability of the data, qualification of the staff and etc.). Some 19 of these aspects were assessed as being of high quality, based on a 5 point assessment scale, and the remaining three aspects were graded, at one point lower, as being of good quality.
The report of Mr. Kimberly D. Zieschang based on the results of his assessment mission is presented on our web-page. This report will also be presented on the IMF web page.
Web page>> ? ? http://www.azstat.org/sdds/en/index.shtml
