Ministry of Finance and Statistical Office – Monstat: Radojević's statements are false

The Ministry of Finance and the Statistical Office - Monstat, reacted to the allegations of the president of the Society of Statisticians and Demographers of Montenegro, Gordana Radojević, presented in the text "The Ministry of Finance should have calculated public debt according to ESA since 2015", published on the Vijesti portal.

We transmit the response in full:

"Regarding the statements of the President of the Society of Statisticians and Demographers of Montenegro, Ms. Gordana Radojević, that 'the Ministry of Finance should calculate public debt according to ESA from 2015', for the sake of truthfulness and in order to accurately and objectively inform the public, we emphasize that the Ministry of Finance is fully implementing all legal obligations and obligations arising from the EU accession negotiation process.

When it comes to publishing public finance data in accordance with the European ESA 2010 methodology, we note that after several years of stagnation in the regular collection, processing and production of this data, the Ministry of Finance in the 44th Government initiated the resolution of this challenge and successfully implemented, together with other producers of official statistics, the first necessary steps in the implementation of ESA standards in the field of public finance statistics. A new IPA 2022 international project was launched, the necessary amendments to the Law on Official Statistics and the System of Official Statistics ("Official Gazette of Montenegro", No. 023/25 of 11.03.2025) were adopted and for the first time data were submitted to Eurostat as a result of the project within the framework of the April reporting, in the manner that all EU member states do. Additionally, based on legal prerequisites, a legal framework has been set for the adoption of a new Trilateral Agreement between the Ministry of Finance, Monstat and the Central Bank of Montenegro, in order to define individual activities, the preparation of which is underway through the Working Group. All these activities have resulted in a significant intensification of the negotiation process within the chapters whose benchmarks are essentially conditioned by the fulfillment of the stated obligation, such as negotiating chapter 17 - Economic and Monetary Union and negotiating chapter 18 - Statistics.

One of the essential decisions is the aforementioned amendments to the System Law, which transferred the competence for the production of government finance statistics in accordance with the ESA methodology to the Statistical Office - Monstat, as the coordinator of the official statistics system. In the meantime, the Ministry of Finance publishes regularly, monthly, quarterly and annually, all data within its competence in accordance with the national methodology, until the complete transition to the European system of calculations and calculations according to the ESA methodology in the field of public finances.

On the other hand, as a responsible institution, we must point out the fact that the failure to publish data in accordance with European standards in the previous period, and especially in the period since 2017, was largely due to the refusal of Ms. Radojević to allow the Statistical Office, whose director she was in the aforementioned period, to take over the relevant competence, as is the case in European practice and EU member states. As Ms. Radojević is also aware, in the period before 2024, numerous institutional and organizational changes in the work of the state administration caused delays in the implementation of activities in this field, and all these initiatives and previous multi-year systemic challenges in this area awaited the Ministry of Finance and the 44th Government, which successfully initiated their resolution and whose activities are already coming to an end. For example, work on amendments to the Law on Official Statistics and the System of Official Statistics began in 2022, but there were no results by 2024.

We also note that three institutions, the Ministry of Finance, Monstat and the Central Bank of Montenegro, participated jointly in the IPA 2017 project, the results of which, after a multi-year standstill, were only delivered in 2024, at the initiative of this Ministry of Finance. This step was a turning point and a prerequisite for obtaining the new, above-mentioned IPA 2022 project, which is well underway and which will result in the publication of data on the state of public finances, i.e. the entire public sector, in accordance with the ESA 2010 methodology. Therefore, the claims that data and information under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance are not being published are absolutely unfounded, since the results of the project are currently in the test phase, i.e. that the data will be published after verification by Eurostat and the establishment of regular production of government finance statistics data.

The Ministry of Finance, in addition to implementing legal prerequisites, strongly advocates for a systemic long-term solution to this issue, which includes building and developing adequate capacities in order to facilitate the regular production of this statistical data based on modern European standards.

Therefore, if Ms. Radojević did not have concerns when she was at the head of the Statistical Office, now there is no reason to worry about whether the Ministry of Finance will fulfill its legal obligations, but the question is why the obligations by Monstat were not fulfilled during the period when she was at the head of that institution. Finally, the process of producing and publishing data on public finance statistics in accordance with the ESA methodology is by no means the task or obligation of only individual institutions, but of the state of Montenegro, and therefore we call on all public actors, including the non-governmental sector, to make joint efforts to direct energy towards those activities that essentially bring us closer to EU membership and the values ​​shared by the European community," the joint response of the Ministry of Finance and the Statistical Office - Monstat states.