“I would like to underline importance of the reliable, impartial and unbiased statistic data in decision-making process as no policy can be developed or no decisions can be made without due surveys, accurate information, proper estimation and statistics”, - the First Vice Speaker, Tamar Chugoshvili stated at the Regional Conference “Gender Statistics: Challenges and Opportunities for SDGs Monitoring”.

She noted that everyone realizes high importance of statistic data free from political partiality. “And the Parliament – the agency I represent today shall be the first guarantee of this impartiality as it is stipulated under the legislation”, - she noted.

The Parliament attaches high importance to research-based policy development.

“We try to create the analytical-research relations to make the policy development process even more professional and effective and naturally, nothing can be compared to the role of the National Statistics Office. The information accumulated by you is very valuable. So, let me thank you for your activity and for professional cooperation between our institutions”.

The Chair of the Gender Equality Council also spoke about the issue relevant for women related to the Statistics Department.

“Economic strengthening of women is the top priority of 2019 for the Parliament and we have several main directions: labor rights of women; accessibility to vocational education for economic strengthening of women; women’s participation in state economic programs; and yet another direction is so-called pay gap, calculation of which is impossible without the Statistics Office”.

There is much to do to ensure balance between the economic condition of men and women, to reduce gap and ensure equal economic development for every Georgian citizen.

“At most, we rely on the Statistics Office, the information you obtain and I would like to express our gratitude for cooperation. Once again, let me congratulate you with this significant date and on behalf of the Parliament confirm that we fully realize importance of your impartial activity, including necessity of the budget resources to ensure your full activity with our intact support”.