Experts of Business Registers from the whole world gather in Tallinn

“The Wiesbaden Group on Business Registers is an international expert group under the umbrella of the UN Statistical Commission engaged in further development of statistical business registers,“ remarked Ms Svetlana Shutova, the organiser of the conference from Statistics Estonia.

“During the four days we are going to discuss the experiences of different countries related to the compilation, maintenance and development of statistical business registers,” explained Ms Shutova the aim of the conference. Ms Shutova added that business registers have an important role in statistics, while all economic statistics are produced on their basis. She explained that administrative databases of countries cannot be used directly for producing internationally comparable statistics, as these databases have been created pursuant to the legislation of the respective country and legislation differs by countries. Besides, the data of these databases may often be insufficiently covered and not timely enough. “In order to produce internationally comparable and qualitative statistics, statistical registers are formed,” Ms Shutova explained.

According to Ms Shutova, co-operation with administrative information sources, data quality and information exchange between different institutions are main topics of the conference. “Sharing experiences in this field is useful and interesting for all parties,” she noted.

Wiesbaden Group Conferences are held every other year. This year nearly 80 participants from 40 countries and organisations of the world are participating in the seminar. The international organisations UNECE, OECD, Eurostat and European Central Bank are represented.

The next Wiesbaden Group Conference will be held in the Unites States in 2012.