show the actual inflation. furthermore, do we move along with the international experience, here i refer to the best practices, where do we lag behind, what and how long does it take to narrow or eliminate the lag. the responses and measures for better solutions are not given to us indefinitely. the current lags affect our current decisions. now, they affect the quality of comparability of our conditions with those of the countries we seek to integrate with. ladies and gentlemen, on the 8th of may this year, only 15 days ago, macedonia had the honor to represent its first preaccession economic program at the ministerial dialog between the ministries of economy and finance of the eu and the candidate countries in brussels. the adopted conclusions that refer to our country, amongst other things, state that " generally, the document suffers from a lack of reliable statistics, impeding the analyses of the position of the country regarding the growth cycle... ", which, you would all agree, has to do with the reliability, in such situation, with inflation calculations, particularly of the expected one. furthermore, page 4 says that " in the area of economic statistics, top priority for macedonia is to establish a capacity for regular production and submission of annual and sub - annual statistics ", but, also, not failing to notice that " a certain progress has been made in the annual national accounts, following the esa 95 concepts ", and that we should move on in that area. page 5 says that croatia and macedonia have been invited to intensify their efforts to conform with hicp ( harmonized index of consumer prices ), and that with respect to the monetary and financial statistics, the central banks of the candidate countries ( and therefore our central bank ), will be legally bound to start with the harmonization, which is necessary to bring the statistics in compliance with those of the ecb, as a legal requirement, once they are admitted to the ecb, and that it is desirable to start earlier to prepare for the membership in the european system of central banks. and finally, that the candidate countries have been invited to intensify urgently their efforts in this respect and that the efc ( economicfinancial committee ) should keep on directly monitoring the progress on the basis of the annual progress report on the action plan ". consequently, we and those we want to be with are aware that we should strengthen our endeavors to make our statistics better, and hence, i consider that this workshop

the establishing of a cooperation with other european central banks. the implementation of these and similar projects by the ecb and the eu in recent years, unequivocally confirms their continued determination, commitment and dedication to assist the central banks of the western balkan countries on their way to joining the escb, and later the euro system. on the other hand, the realization of such projects enables strengthening of the cooperation between the central banks of the region and the central banks of the eu, which is inevitable in the process of integrating the entire region in the eu. let me finally thank the ecb and the eu for enabling the nbrm to participate in this project. i wish success for all the institutions involved in the project in anticipation of even greater cooperation and i thank our hosts for organizing this event. bis central bankers ’ speeches