with the latter. to celebrate its 20th anniversary, the cmfb thought of publishing a book offering a recollection of the main milestones that were achieved during these two decades, as well as some reflections on a number of statistical issues in which the committee is expected to be involved in the future. in recognition of the good work carried out by the cmfb through all these years, the banco de portugal decided to support that initiative by sponsoring the publication of the book. the outcome of this undertaking will be presented by the next speaker in a little while. as to the lisbon workshop, its principal goal could be summarised in the following statement : drawing from the past to prepare for the future! this is, in my opinion, a very fitting and commendable proposition. during the two sessions of the workshop and the ensuing debate the participants are expected to draw on the lessons learnt from cmfb ’ s past mandates to find ways to further reinforce the collaborative efforts between central banks and statistical offices, with a view to better coping with the challenges ahead as regards official statistics ( e. g., early identification of the likely changes and the true underlying economics of the events and transactions that have to be measured ). it is my firm belief that your combined efforts and your expertise will bring in a dynamic, productive and efficient meeting, with interesting presentations and fruitful discussions about the issue of interagency statistical cooperation at national and eu levels. before giving the floor to mr cadete de matos, for him to proceed with the commentary and delivery of the book, i would like to conclude this brief address by wishing you all the best in whatever your future holds. thank you very much. bis central bankers ’ speeches

efficient interagency statistical cooperation, especially at international level, is instrumental to the quality, relevancy and cost - effectiveness of macroeconomic statistics. to reach this stage, i believe that we need to further strengthen the statistical governance in europe. with this in mind, i would like to draw on the speech made by mr jean - claude trichet, former president of the ecb, at the 3rd ecb conference on statistics, in 2006. in his communication, he mentioned that “ good governance is particularly important for statistics that have a direct administrative and policy use in europe, such as the indicators for assessing the convergence of eu member states that do not yet belong to the euro area and the statistics underlying the excessive deficit procedure ”. from there, he moved to the importance of interagency cooperation for statistics purposes and the role played by the cmfb in this process, emphasising that “ while eurostat is responsible for these statistics, it can benefit, when deciding upon conceptual issues, from the considerable statistical expertise available at the eurostat, the ecb, the nsis and the ncbs, as brought together in the cmfb ”. another important point raised by mr trichet in his speech regards the need to safeguard the independence of the statistical function. on this topic, he said that “... the compilation of government finance statistics – and all other statistics for that matter – should not be subject to political considerations. the compilers of these statistics must act in full bis central bankers ’ speeches scientific independence, and the government must ensure that sufficient resources are made available for their task ”. he also highlighted the need to periodically appraise the relevance of extant statistics, by stating that “... it is important to regularly review the cost / benefit ratio of existing statistics that were agreed upon many years ago ”. these wise words are still relevant today and i fully support them. i find particularly interesting the idea expressed by mr trichet on the same occasion that “ over time the european statistical systems will develop in the direction of genuine systems with regional competence centres, coordinated by the european institutions. the mutual interdependence of statistics compilers would then increase, which in turn calls for a further strengthening of international statistical governance. ” that being said, i now turn to the subject that brought us here today, which is twofold : the lisbon workshop and the related banco de portugal ’ s sponsorship of the book that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the cmfb. i will start