The Directorate for Statistics - Monstat expects that at the beginning of the week, the procedure related to the third tender for the procurement of software that citizens will use to control their data on ethnic-cultural characteristics, collected by the census of the population, households and apartments, will be completed.
The creation of the software was imposed on the Directorate of Statistics by an agreement between the government and the opposition on the maintenance of the census, although the software is not required for the processing of statistical data or any procedure during the census.
On June 19, Monstat announced the third tender for the development of software. The first failed because no offer was submitted, while the second had only one, with incorrect documentation. Then they announced that the estimated value of the public procurement is 20.000 euros including VAT, and that the deadline for submitting offers is June 26 of this year.
"The deadline for submitting bids for the tender for the procurement of software that citizens will use to control their data on ethnic-cultural characteristics collected by the population, household and apartment census has expired and the other procedures required by the Law on Public Procurement are ongoing. Consequently, the procedure has not yet been completed," the Statistics Administration informed "Vijesta".
They announced that after the procedures defined by law have been implemented and the deadlines have expired, they expect the procedure to be finalized at the beginning of next week, when they will inform the public about the details of the complete tender procedure.
In June, "Vijesti" asked that institution what it would do if the third tender failed, and whether it could delay the data release dates. Monstat, instead of a further reply, referred "Vijesti" to the statement they sent earlier, in which it is stated that they are not late "with activities defined by law in connection with the publication of census data".
"Let us repeat - the publication of the final results of the census is defined by Article 30 of the Law on the Census and it is foreseen that the final results of the conducted census will be published by the Directorate of Statistics according to the annual plan of official statistics and the calendar of publication of statistical data. These documents define that the announcements of the census of population, households and apartments in 2023 will be published successively in the second half of this year, after data entry, processing and control".
Preliminary census data, which were published at the end of January, showed that in 2023, there were 633.158 inhabitants and 217.441 thousand households in Montenegro, including 396.873 apartments. During the data collection phase, a total of 673.203 people were registered.
The census began on December 3 and lasted until December 28 last year.
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