30% of EKOMAR questionnaires were submitted by the deadline

EKOMAR is the most extensive and important statistical activity covering annual data, based on which Statistics Estonia compiles overviews on entrepreneurship and receives an input to assess economic growth. If an enterprise submits its annual report to the Commercial Register, then based on that report 80% of the enterprise’s EKOMAR questionnaire is already pre-filled for Statistics Estonia; so far it has been possible to use pre-filling in the case of 88% of the respondents. Despite that, only 30% of the enterprises submit their EKOMAR questionnaire on time and this year was no exception. Post-deadline data collection increases the percentage of questionnaires submitted to 70%, but it is a time- and resource-intensive process both for the respondents and for those collecting the data.

“A total of 8,000 enterprises are to submit the EKOMAR questionnaire in 2016,” explained Andres Oopkaup, Director General of Statistics Estonia. “This year, for the first time, we have distributed the deadlines of the EKOMAR questionnaire over a longer period and, depending on the economic activity of the enterprise, the deadline falls in the period of 1–8 July, but despite that the percentage of questionnaires submitted still stood at barely 30% among enterprises whose deadline was 1 July,” stated Oopkaup. “Each year we have been both explaining the necessity of data submission and reducing the respective administrative burden,” he added. “The long-standing trend of missing the EKOMAR deadline and the low data submission rate have forced Statistics Estonia to start considering imposing a penalty payment on enterprises failing to submit their data,” noted Oopkaup.

The meeting with EKOMAR respondents will be held on 6 July at 10:00, in the fifth floor conference room at Statistics Estonia.

Director General Andres Oopkaup will talk about the measures taken to reduce the administrative burden of enterprises and about further plans regarding this issue. Deputy Director General Allan Randlepp will explain what caused the situation where Statistics Estonia announced the plan of implementing penalty payments for the non-submission of data, and Ilona Ehtla, Leading Specialist in data processing, will explain what is going to be done to improve the enterprises’ data submission rate, so that it would not come to implementing the penalty payment system. The meeting will end with a discussion about the alternative data sources or data collection channels for EKOMAR data.

Registration for the event is open on Statistics Estonia’s website (only in Estonian).

To fulfil the orders of ministries and international organisations, Statistics Estonia organises approximately 200 statistical activities per year, with two-thirds of the activities being completely or partially based on administrative data (registers). Statistics Estonia collects additional data from enterprises only if the necessary data are missing in the registers, if register data cannot be directly matched with the definitions of official statistics, if the data appear in the registers too late or with a varying frequency; in some cases, however, it is not even sensible to record the necessary data in registers.

Approximately 40,000 enterprises, which account for 39% of all enterprises operating in Estonia, are to submit data to Statistics Estonia in 2016. Enterprises can check which questionnaires they are expected to submit in 2016 on Statistics Estonia’s website. The same questionnaires are displayed also on eSTAT, Statistics Estonia’s electronic data collection channel.