Cards 2003 Regional Programme - lessons learned and suggestions for the future Albania

The CARDS 2003 regional programme focused on 4 components : a) External Trade statistics b) PPP (Purchasing Power parities) c) Migration statistics and d) Labour market statistics

These components really needed improvement in Albania in the beginning of the project and now they have made progress thanks to the working group meetings and trainings organised through CARDS 2003.

INSTAT participated in: Working group meetings which were mainly held in Luxembourg Joint UNECE/OECD/EUROSTAT meetings Training courses

Working group meetings were helpful to understand the stage of development of the EU countries, how they arrived there, what mistakes they did in that process, how they do things. We could learn from developed countries to improve our statistics.

On the other hand training courses were very useful as they focused on concrete topics. They helped a lot in solving problems especially for national accounts statistics. These training courses are very useful for countries in transition such as Albania.

We had many new employees in our office, so training courses helped them to understand more about their work. One week training courses (10-12 of them) in various statistical areas covering general statistics, statistical methodology, methods, IT and techniques gathered a significant number of employees.

Another useful point of the project was the experts coming to Albania to help improving the work in INSTAT.

They helped in completing the 5 year plan for statistics, the panel sample selection for LFS 2007 first and second round and sample estimation, sample selection for LFS 2008, migration estimates, external trade data base improvement.

PPP data were improved during this project. We have participated in WG meetings for PPP and in seminars also. We could listen to the experience of EU countries in WG meetings, but also give our data to Euro stat and consult with other countries from the region in seminars which were held in different countries especially in Slovenia which is the leader for the Western Balkans group.

Main characteristics of the Cards 2003 regional project and conclusions of INSTAT: Flexibility of Cards regional comparing to the CARDS National Project (in activities, budget, choice of experts) Variety of areas covered Faster process of planning and faster realisation Understanding from the Implementation agency and Euro stat Possibility to include some activities which were not foreseen in advance

Recommendations from INSTAT for future projects implementation: To organize more training courses. Trainings are more specific and can help us in different issues. To give more specific assistance, for example for PPP. Slovenia was responsible for Balkan Countries and she used to make one visit for each Balkan Country, so what they ask is more than one study visit. National Accounts needs more technical assistance to contract supplies tables, improvement constant prices estimations etc External Trade Statistics, assistance for processing the data in order to be compatible with EU Standards. To include other counterparts and producers of official statistics egg. Ministries that gives result in better communication and better quality statistics produced.

Thank You, for Your Attention !