ISSEK Experts Took Part in Improving the CIS Countries’ Industrial Statistics in the Scope of the UNIDO Project

Preprint “Industrial Development in the CIS: Re-industrialisation Trends and Potential” is published at the UNIDO official website. The publication presents statistical analysis of the scale and trends of manufacturing industry development in Russia and the CIS countries, focusing on efficiency of integration processes, quality of industrial policy, and strengthening competitiveness.

The UNIDO is a global forum for promoting best practices and analysis of industrial development-related issues and adopting relevant international standards, among other things for industrial statistics’ purposes. Since 2012 the UNIDO Department of Policy Research and Statistics is implementing the project “Upgrading Industrial Statistics and Developing Statistical Indicators for Analysing Industrial Development in CIS Countries”, covering various areas of industrial statistics.

The UNIDO project is aimed at surveying companies, upgrading the business registry system, and developing national industrial statistical indicators including industrial production indices. An important project component is building CIS national statistical services’ staff competencies in application of internationally compatible industrial statistics, specifically data collection and data processing techniques, and dissemination of results.

To benchmark countries’ positions in the international market, and attract foreign investments, internationally compatible statistics are required. Technical support by the UNIDO is supposed to help countries to set up relevant divisions at their national statistical services, responsible for building indicators and coordinating various industry-specific statistical areas. This is particularly important when various aggregated efficiency indicators are built by the CIS countries’ national statistical services based on somewhat different sets of statistical units, since they are produced by different departments.

The main project areas are designing an up-to-date statistical registry in line with international recommendations and national legislation; integrating international industrial statistics standards in national questionnaires to produce compatible data; and building standardised statistical indicators for measuring industrial production efficiency based on productivity, structural changes, and competitiveness.

The preprint presents certain results of integrated analysis of industrial development strategies’ efficiency, in the format of internationally compatible official manufacturing statistics produced in nine CIS countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine) in 2005 -2014. The authors chose this period as a reference point for assessing economic growth, since it covers a full business development cycle in the CIS countries – from the beginning of one deep recession (2008-2009) to the beginning of another (2014).

Statistical data sources included UNIDO industrial statistics database (UNIDO Statistics Data Portal) [UNIDO, 2016]; Rosstat’s EMISS database (Unified Inter-Departmental Informational and Statistical System) [Rosstat, 2016]; the CIS Statistical Committee’s database “CIS Statistics” [CIS Statistical Committee, 2016]; and the UNCTADstat database [UNCTAD, 2016].

Liudmila Kitrar, deputy director of the HSE ISSEK Centre for Business Tendency Studies, was responsible for the project’s analytical module as a UNIDO expert. A working group comprising the Centre’s staff members was set up to help with analytical research; the group members co-authored the preprint. Certain segments of the Russian manufacturing industry were analysed for the project in the scope of the HSE Basic Research Programme and in the framework of the “5-100” national programme providing support to leading Russian universities.

The results of the UNIDO project may be useful to provide methodological support to the CIS countries’ national statistical services in their application of international industrial statistics standards, upgrading major industrial statistics areas, and improving availability, quality, and compatibility of data provided to researchers and strategic decision makers.

	The full version of the preprint: Industrial development in the CIS: Re-industrialization trends and potential (UNIDO, Vienna, 2016)
		Authors: Liudmila Kitrar, Deputy Director, the HSE ISSEK Centre for Business Tendency Studies Shyam Upadhyaya, Chief Statistician, the UNIDO Department of Policy Research and Statistics Kateryna Gumeniuk, Expert, the UNIDO Department of Policy Research and Statistics Georgy Ostapkovich, Director, the HSE ISSEK Centre for Business Tendency Studies Tamara Lipkind, Leading Expert, the HSE ISSEK Centre for Business Tendency Studies