National Statistics Office Receives Donation from European Union

The National Statistics Office (ONE) will receive technical assistance through an international cooperation donation earmarked for its second Budget Program called “System Indicators for Social and Economic Planning.”  It is part of the Institutional Support Program for the Management of Public Finances (PAIGFP), coordinated by the Housing Ministry and financed by the European Union through the Office of European Development Funds (ONFED).

The budget, DR$41,397,199.47, will be used to hire national and international technical assistants as well as for training, the purchase of supplies and to cover operational costs of the project.

The budget, DR$41,397,199.47, will be used to hire national and international technical assistants as well as for training, the purchase of supplies and to cover operational costs of the project.

This initiative was conceived as a result of the Dominican government´s interest in strengthening the country´s National Statistics System (SEN) which, since August 2004, has been developing a series of activities with the goal of effectively gathering and organizing information while making it available but also guarding privacy use and rights.

ONE recently signed a cooperation agreement with the European Union through ONFED with the goal of providing a system in which the government, through a statistics index system, will be able to access information for planning and public finance management as well as institutions, organizational processes, procedures and human resources to guarantee effective, regular, efficient, transparent and results-oriented public spending.     

In keeping with the regulations in the financial agreement, the project enjoys technical and financial autonomy for the management of the assigned resources. It will be administered by the attorney Pablo Tactuk, National Director of ONE. He will be in charge for the period of September 1, 2008 until March 2010.

In this sense, Mr. Tactuk, announced that “this Budget Program will function within the general objective of the PAIGFP, which seeks to contribute to the improvement of the quality of life for Dominican men and women thanks to some of the government institutions that have the capability of gathering resources, providing public services and carrying out policies in a coherent manner according to what is projected in the final document.”

These modernizing actions allow for the strengthening of the ONE, the main organizer and regulator of the system, on a technical level while involving the generation and use of information as well as the appropriate development of supportive infrastructures from the global perspective of articulation and normalization of the National Statistics System (SEN), visualizing it as a centralized normative system of and a decentralized operative system.

“This initiative seeks to contribute to the improvement of the effectiveness and the regularity of the budgetary process such as the way the government, through ONE, has access to reliable data and systematic updates for the definition and planning of public policy,” according to Domingo Jiménez, Director General of the National Organizer of European Funds for Development. At the same time, he said that it has been a successful decision and that they have access to high quality technology and enthusiastic response from the ONE team.

ONE is oriented and equipped to supply statistics and indicators that allow the country to plan, design, follow-up and evaluate the efficiency and efficacy of public policies on a national, regional, local and sector level…

The project was presented at a press conference held at the ONE offices. Alicia Escuín, Head of the European Delegation in the Dominican Republic, presided over the meeting.  She was accompanied by the Deputy Minister of the Treasury from the Housing Ministry, María Felisa Gutiérrez; Domingo Jiménez, Director General of the National Organizer of European Funds for Development and Pablo Tactuk, Director General of ONE.

In August 2004, the National Statistics Office began a reform and institutional modernization process for which the Strategic Plan 2005-2010 was put into place with the goal of transforming the institution into a results-oriented, public service organization.

ONE is oriented and equipped to supply statistics and indicators that allow the country to plan, design, follow-up and evaluate the efficiency and efficacy of public policies on a national, regional, local and sector level with a base of information that focuses on a knowledge and understanding of these realities. As such, the institution has adopted as its goal, to provide basic information to be fed into the System of National Accounts, the Millennium Development Objectives and Human Development.

Others present and the activity included Ramón Ventura Camejo, Minister of the State Secretariat of Public Administration (SEAP); Gregorio Montero, Deputy Minister of SEAP´s Public Function;  Manuel Concepción, National Deputy Coordinator of the PAIGFP; Raymundo Garrido, Deputy Director of the Private Sector Economic Support of ONFED; Clara Báez, Manager of Technical Coordination and International Cooperation of ONE, and Claudio Peri, Head of Planning and Follow-up at ONE.