Review of Scandinavian Assistance to the statistical bureau in Mozambique (INE)

This evaluation of the three Scandinavian Statistical Central Bureaus to Instituto Nacional Estatistico (INE) in Mozambique concludes that the project, as well as its predecessor projects, have benefited from working with capable, willing and enthusiastic staff in INE and much has been achieved and has been successful from a low starting point since 1998. The strength of the Scandinavian long-term institutional approach is very evident and has helped to develop the collective competence of INE staff and capacity of the institution. But there is still a long way to go for INE to be able to sustain production of the key statistics needed for Mozambique's poverty reduction and general policy and planning processes. It is likely that INE will continue to need external support for the foreseeable future. This will be needed to fund investment in building human capacity, systems and infrastructure as well as to meet a proportion of recurrent costs until the government's financial capacity is increased. This base funding will be important to INE and a reduction in the level of external support will need to be carefully planned to preserve project gains and avoid a collapse in the outputs of INE. INE will also continue to need technical assistance to continue improvements in the quality of the end products produced.