The National Statistics Office was not transparent, the GRTU, Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises, said yesterday, after passing to the head of the NSO a report drawn up by Prof. Joe Falzon, Professor of Economy at the University of Malta.

While there was no online access to the methods and tools used by the NSO in the formulation of statistics which the NSO produced, a true verification in real time could not be conducted by anyone except the NSO officials, the GRTU said.

It said important tools such as the deflators should be available and accessible and there should be information about how and which figures were used as deflators. Today there was not even access to an independent public regulator because today’s regulator was also the NSO’s chief executive officer.

In its bid for NSO transparency, the GRTU has called on the chairman of the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development to convene a meeting of the council for it to be given an explanation about how statistics were being used to calculate the real gross domestic product.

Information should be given about which deflators were being used, how, and their value; to make the price index monitoring board, which had on it representatives of the MCESD, the consultative committee of the social partners for all deflators, not just for the retail price index; and among others, for the MCESD to be told what was being done to appoint someone as executive head of the NSO, so that the functions of the public regulator and the executive head would again be separate.

The GRTU said the chairman and entire board of the Statistics Authority should attend.