Estonian census is much more expensive than Latvian

  • 2012-02-08

TALLINN - While Latvians paid 7.7 million euros for their census and data processing, the planned costs of Statistics Estonia reach 18.9 million euros, Aripaev writes.

This means that counting one Estonian is nearly four times more expansive in comparison with costs of counting one Latvian, the newspaper says.

Director General of Statistics Estonia Priit Potisepp said that it was complicated to compare the spending of Latvia and Estonia on census. "We don't know which costs and over what period of time are reflected in the Latvian figure," he said.

Estonia can so far speak only about budget and not real costs, he said, adding that practices have shown that real spending is usually smaller than planned in the budget.

Estonian census will last till the end of March.