Statistics Agency offers no answer on deletion of 300,000 enumerated persons

The public interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina continues regarding the story of how almost 300,000 people will be deleted from the total number of enumerated residents in BiH. This was stated by the Deputy Director of the BiH Statistics Agency, Slavka Popović, saying that out of the enumerated 3,791,622 residents, the number will be reduced due to "statistical data cleaning".

We sought an official stance from the BiH Statistics Agency and an explanation of what this is actually about, but the Agency only stated that the 2013 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in BiH is conducted according to a methodology aligned with the International Standards for Population and Housing Censuses defined by UNECE and Eurostat, and approved by the Conference of European Statisticians as Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses 2010.

- Then with Regulation (EC) on population and housing censuses, and implementation measures, Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, adopted by the UN Statistical Commission, as well as with the Code of Practice on European Statistics proclaimed by the European Commission. The aforementioned international statistical standards will also be used during the processing of census data in BiH, according to the recommendations and under the supervision of the International Monitoring Mission – stated the BiH Statistics Agency.

When asked who among the enumerated will be deleted from the records of the census, which was assessed as extremely successful by all international organizations and the European Commission, the Agency replied:

- All census material is first scanned, in its original form, as it came from the field. After that, it undergoes software, logical, and quota controls, which avoids any subjectivity, i.e., anyone's influence on the results – the Agency added.

On what basis someone can delete such a large number of people who were properly enumerated was not specified, but they noted that the total number of residents is defined in the Methodology for the preparation, organization and implementation of the 2013 Census in BiH, in the Law on the 2013 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in BiH, and the aforementioned documents.