Commission Report (2002): Czech Republic

• Progress since the last Regular Report
• Overall assessment
• Conclusion

Chapter 12: Statistics

Progress since the last Regular Report

The Czech Republic has continued to make steady progress over the past year.

As regards statistical infrastructure, considerable enhancements to the information and communications technologies of the Czech Statistical Office (CzSO) were made. This was linked to an extensive training scheme in order to make full use of the capacities. Moreover, the CzSO started using the Total Quality Management model and adopted a Code of Ethics for its staff. The regional offices were reorganised following the new regional structure of the country.

The Statistical Office has substantially strengthened its administrative capacity for implementing the acquis with the establishment of its regional representations in all 14 regions (provisional Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics at level 3 (NUTS classification).

All major classifications, which are relevant for implementing the acquis, are in force in the Czech Republic. As indicated, there is a regional sub-division of the country's territory, which corresponds to the NUTS classification and divides the Czech Republic into 14 districts at level 3, coinciding with the 14 regional governments created in 2000.

No major developments can be reported as regards sectoral statistics.

As regards Government finance statistics, the methodology and the CzSO's co-operation with the Ministry of Finance have made progress concerning the recording of tax revenues on accrual basis and the coverage of transactions of non-budgetary institutions. The Statistical Business Register made significant progress over the past year by implementing a profiling exercise of local units and by improving cross-checking with other administrative sources. Thus, the quality of the register has improved considerably.

For external trade, work concentrated on the preparations of INTRASTAT, a system monitoring trade between Member States.

In agriculture statistics data from the agriculture census have been used to considerably improve the farm register. Significant progress was made in the fields of economic accounts, incomes and prices in agriculture.

Overall assessment

Some further improvement of the statistical law, such as widening the scope of the responsibilities of the members of the Statistical Council and fixing the term of appointments for the top management in the law could help to enhance the workings of the Czech Statistical Office. Given the fact that the Czech statistical system is a rather decentralised system with many statistical surveys outside the CzSO survey programme, the co-ordinating role of the CzSO needs further strengthening.

As regards sectoral statistics, the Czech Republic is well advanced. In demographic and social statistics, in most areas the outputs of statistical production compare with those in most EU countries. Social protection accounts need to be developed. Statistics at regional level are well developed and have been brought into line with the new regional organisation of the country. Many data are available at NUTS 2 and 3 and some at NUTS 4 level.

Macro-economic statistics are produced on the basis of the European System of Accounts (ESA-95) methodology at a high level of compliance. The Czech Republic is a member of the European comparison programme, which supplies the data for the compilation of Purchasing Power Standards. Monetary, financial and balance of payments statistics are compiled by the Czech National Bank. Annual and quarterly balance of payments statistics follow the 5th IMF Manual and EC requirements. Government finance statistics need to be brought in line with the ESA 95 concept.

Structural business statistics and production statistics are produced at a very high level of compliance. Short-term business statistics are well developed. Attention should be paid to improving the quality and accuracy of business statistics and reducing the heavy response burden on enterprises through better use of administrative sources like the tax register. For the latter, better co-operation with the Ministry of Finance is needed.

As for environment statistics, the CzSO is able to deliver most of the indicators required but efforts are needed to bring them into line with EC standards.

Conclusion

In its 1997 Opinion, the Commission concluded that the Czech Republic should be able to comply with EC requirements within the next few years provided that continuing progress was made.

Since the Opinion, the Czech Republic has made good further progress in most areas of statistics; in addition, a population and housing census and an agricultural census were conducted in 2001 and 2000 respectively. Overall, the Czech Republic is well advanced in this field of statistics. The commitment and high level of competence of staff as well as the newly developed planning system and quality approach constitute a good basis for acquis implementation that still has to be undertaken before accession.

Negotiations on this chapter have been provisionally closed. The Czech Republic has not requested any transitional arrangements in this area. The Czech Republic is generally meeting the commitments it has made in the accession negotiations in this field.

In order to complete preparations for membership, the Czech Republic's efforts should now focus on further improving the quality of the business register and the corresponding surveys among business operators. In general the accuracy and coverage of data needs to be improved further along the lines set out above. The full operation of INTRASTAT at the date of accession needs to be ensured.

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