Bulgaria’s statistics institute slams pro-Kremlin party over disinformation about inflation
Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute (NSI) has published a strongly-worded statement rejecting unfounded allegations by pro-Kremlin minority party Vuzrazhane leader Kostadin Kostadinov that the party has “received information from reliable sources that the National Statistical Institute is preparing a serious manipulation of inflation data for the month of September”.
The NSI statement comes in the context of the official campaign period ahead of Bulgaria’s latest early parliamentary elections, to be held on October 27 2024, the seventh time in just more than three years that Bulgarians elect a legislature.
In the current Parliament, Vuzrazhdane has 38 out of 240 MPs. Parliament’s third-largest group, it is known for promoting a message that is pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukrainian, for “renegotiating” Bulgaria’s membership of the European Union, demanding a referendum on Bulgaria leaving Nato, and the party opposes Bulgaria joining the EU’s common currency, the euro.
Key to Bulgarian accession to the euro is meeting the inflation criteria.
The NSI said that inflation in Bulgaria is calculated according to officially accepted European regulations and in accordance with a harmonized methodology, as in all member states of the European Union, and the data are verified and validated by Eurostat every month.
In the past two years, the NSI hosted several regular missions by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2022 and 2023 and by Eurostat in 2022 and 2024, where the methodologies of various studies were checked , including that of inflation, the NSI said.
“All of them state that the Bulgarian statistics fulfills the requirements and works according to the harmonized methodologies without deviations,” the institute said.
The NSI said that the latest Eurostat mission had no found no irregularities in the NSI’s calculations.
The institute said that Eurostat checked its calculations in detail, and if not accurate, would not be published on the Eurostat website.
The NSI said that in the 144 years since it was established, “there has been no proven case of data manipulation”.
“The National Statistical Institute is an independent institution and, in connection with the above, categorically states that it does not wish to be involved in the election campaign and distances itself from election propaganda, where a party irresponsibly and for personal gain harms not only the NSI as an institution, but also of Bulgaria as a whole,” the NSI said.
The NSI is due to publish its latest CPI data on October 15.
(Photo: NSI)
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