The wait for a new director general at the National Statistics Office is set to be extended by a further three weeks, as the call for applications was only issued this week.

A notice published yesterday by the statistics watchdog invited interested parties to submit their applications by not later than February 9. It said the ideal candidate would be expected to ensure that all the data published would be “reliable, precise and punctual”.

Last November, the Malta Statistics Authority opted not to renew the term of Michael Pace Ross, who had been at the helm of the NSO since 2008. Since then, Joe Bonello has been acting director general.

The departure of Mr Pace Ross came weeks after harsh criticism from Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, who had even accused the NSO of giving a “distorted picture” of the employment sector.

In September, the authority had issued revised data on the gainfully occupied population, pointing out that a comment made in an NSO news release a few weeks before was “not correct”.

Prior to this incident, the NSO had also been criticised by the minister for the methodology used to measure inflation, as well as the manner in which it had compiled Gross Domestic Product figures.