The NSO has opened a new branch in Gozo, which was inaugurated by Prof. Edward Scicluna, Minister for Finance, and Dr Anton Refalo, Minister for Gozo. H.L. Mgr. Mario Grech, Bishop of Gozo, blessed the premises.

Prof. Albert Leone Ganado, Chairman of the Malta Statistics Authority, and Mr Michael Pace Ross, Director General of the National Statistics Office, delivered introductory speeches.The primary objective of the Gozo Office, in line with an approved business plan, is to allocate dedicated resources and effort to enhance the collection and compilation of existing and new regional statistics, primarily pertaining to Gozo.

Its mandate is to support the outreach of the Head Office and to accentuate its specialisation on small area estimation techniques aimed to conduct comparable and efficient statistics, in accordance with the standards and procedures required by the Code of Practice of the European Statistical System, which NSO endorses.

Official statistics enable users to capture and compare the prevailing specificities of territories. Improvements at regional level will also promote compactness in national estimates. Such a focused approach also improves the effective recording of specialised activities and will keep abreast with ongoing developments.

The Gozo Office will endeavour to strengthen cooperation with Gozo-based stakeholders and to improve the range and quality of regional statistics. This will facilitate a better understanding of the characteristics of the Maltese Islands.

Particular attention will be dedicated to core and distinctive activities prevailing in Gozo and Comino. Bottom-up, top-down and mixed approaches will be adopted to improve the frequency and detail of regional statistics.

The Office will initially house one unit with a staff complement of six: a manager, four statisticians and a statistics executive. The Regional Statistics unit will report to the Director General.

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