According to the Statute of the Interstate Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States the work of the Committee is carried out under the guidance of the Council of the Heads of Statistical Services of states - participants of the CIS which is its superior body. The Council consists of the Heads of Statistical Services of the CIS states - participants and the Chairman of CIS Statcommittee. Currently it comprises 13 persons.

     Council is headed by the Chairman who is elected by turn (in alphabetic order of the CIS state-participant) from the set of the Heads of Statistical Services for one year. The former Chairman and the following one are co-chairmen. When the Chairman of the Council is temporary absent one of his co-chairmen is entrusted with his duties.

     In the period between the meetings of the Council the functions of its working body are executed by the staff of the Statcommittee.

     Council holds meetings when necessary but at least twice a year. Since February 1992 when the CIS Statcommittee was established 29 meetings of the Council were organized, where more than 100 issues were discussed.

     Council discusses the most important problems of the interstate statistical cooperation. Its exclusive competence area includes: definition of the forms of realization of main directions of activity of the CIS Statcommittee, work programme and reports on the CIS Statcommittee's activity.

     All methodological problems are obligatory discussed at the sessions of Scientific council of the CIS Statcommittee before they will be discussed by the Council of the Heads of Statistical Services. Among them there are the problems of macroeconomic and financial statistics, industrial and socio-demographic statistics, statistics of domestic and external trade, international comparisons of the Commonwealth countries, harmonization of economic classifications and statistical forms and so forth. Use of commonly accepted statistical methodology makes a base for reconstruction of all system of statistics applicable to socio-economic transformations which took place the Commonwealth countries.

     Beginning from 1995 the Council discussed systematically the progress of work of national statistical bodies on preparation and conducting regular population censuses in the CIS countries using the unified programme and methodological base in accordance with UN recommendations and international obligations. The Council approved Minimum set of indicators in national census questionnaires, Model law on population census, Model glossaries of nationalities and occupations that will allow to receive comparable data for interstate exchange. The measures were developed to provide software for processing the results of censuses, preparation of cartographic materials and so forth.

     For the present moment population censuses have been conducted in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

     Joint work of the national statistical services of the CIS countries under the guidance of the Council and with the active participation of the CIS Statcommittee made it possible to create coordinated system of statistics in the framework of the Commonwealth, to reform systematically statistical methodology, to carry out transition to international standards, to organize systematic interstate exchange of statistical information and international cooperation in the filed of statistics.

CONTACT INFORMATION OF THE NATIONAL STATISTICAL SERVICES IS NEXT:

   STATCOMMITTEE OF THE CIS HAS ALSO WIDE RELATIONS WITH INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL ORGANIZATIONS: 

United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN ECE), Statistical division

United Nations (UN), Statistics division

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Eurostat, Statistical Office of the European Communities

FAO, Statistics Division

Bureau of Statistics, ILO

Statistics Division, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Institute for Statistics, UNESCO

Statistics Department, International Monetary Fund

Development Economics Department, The World Bank

Permanent office, International Statistical Institute (ISI)

Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21 st century

Committee on Coordination of Statistical Activities