The new situation with the COVID-19 virus has significantly limited the capacity of the Statistical Office and reporting units (citizens, business entities and state administration bodies) to timely fulfil the obligations related to official statistics, and because of it, on 11 August, 2020 we informed the public that there will be a delay in publishing the releases.

In week 17-21 August 2020, the following statistical releases will be published for the following surveys:
17.08 - Producer price indices of industrial products, and
18.08 - Turnover index in services.

New dates for the publication of postponed statistical releases will be determined, depending on the further impact of the epidemiological situation on official statistics, bearing in mind that 20.7% of the total number of employees of the Statistical Office- MONSTAT were prevented from performing work, of which 11.4% were affected by COVID-19 virus, i.e. they are infected or in isolation; 2.1% use the right of parental leave; 3.1% of employees are on sick leave; while 4.1% of employees have terminated their employment or the termination process is in progress.

On the other side, having in mind the general epidemiological situation in the country, a direct access to households has become impossible for MONSTAT to perform face-to-face interviews, resulting in a lower rate of citizen participation in surveys on labour market, income and expenditures, i.e. living conditions of population, and other domains. Additionally, the process of collecting data from business entities and other reporting units has also become more difficult for MONSTAT, because in the new business circumstances, business entities demand to postpone the obligation of statistical reporting for later period, until the recovery of employees or their return from isolation.

All the above mentioned problems that MONSTAT is facing in this period have led to the fact that MONSTAT is not able to publish releases in the same dynamics as it was the practice before the COVID-19 epidemic. We believe that users will understand the new situation in MONSTAT caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, especially bearing in mind that MONSTAT employs 55% or 96 staff members out of 172 planned number of statisticians defined by the Rulebook on Internal Organization and Job Descriptions.

We will inform the public on new dates of publishing postponed statistical releases every Monday at 3 pm.

Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Announcement