JANUARY 2022 3 MONTHLY STATISTICAL BULLETIN Introduction Celebrating its 93rd anniversary, theMonthly Statistical Bulletin once more upholds the spirit with which it was created in the distant month of January 1929, when the first issue was published by the General Directorate of Statistics (DGE), the predecessor of Statistics Portugal (INE): "(...) the DGE considers it still a modest achievement: it has much wider ambitions (...) it will not rest until it has made the present publication a complete and up-to-date summary of Portuguese life". This germinal issue was composed of six chapters spread over 23 pages, in bilingual version (PT/FR). Each issue had a unit cost of 5$00 and the annual subscription was 42$00. In the following years, this periodic publication gained the loyalty of the readers as it was the only monthly publication with economic information and, for this reason, when in 1933, the DGE moved to new premises, which caused a delay in the publication of the bulletin, the DGE ordered a notice to be published in the daily press explaining the reason why the July issue would only come out in September: "(...) due to the transfer of the statistical services to the new headquarters in Avenida Dr. António José de Almeida, which forced an interruption of the scheduled work for a small period ". In 1935, in the report submitted to the Portuguese National Assembly with the draft law for the restructuring of the National Statistical System and the creation of Statistics Portugal, the Monthly Bulletin is mentioned as follows: "(...) It was, in the history of national statistics, a great event (...) It represented a great effort (...) Modest at first, months later it was a publication that did not fear confrontation with the most perfect of its kind in Europe (...) Then, month after month, it achieved remarkable progress." FromMay 1935 onwards, the periodical was renamed Statistics Portugal’s Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, commonly known as BME (Portuguese acronym), and was then composed of 14 chapters. In the introductory note, the editor stresses the matrix pattern of improvement of the BME, stating that "it will gradually insert new elements of information until it reaches all branches of national activity". Since its creation, the BME has had a kind of birthmark: to perfect itself, expand, restructure, reinvent itself, modernise, in short, to periodically surpass itself. In the following decades, the BME was added with new chapters, based on emerging themes, and kept its bilingual version (PT/FR) until December 1990. This is followed by a title redesign, which coincides with a restructuring of the National Statistical System and Statistics Portugal itself. From January 1991 onwards, it was published in Portuguese-English and set itself to integrate social and economic information, in alignment with the challenges arising from the European Economic Union and targeting a wider international readership. However, the bilingual version (PT/EN) had a brief life, until May 1992, after which it was published exclusively in Portuguese. In the 1990s, it included a Monthly Economic Synthesis based on published data and, from 2001 onwards, it was replaced by a Monthly Highlights Synthesis. December 2006 marks a new milestone in the life of the BME, which is published, for the last time, in paper format. From January 2007 onwards, it will be made available, on Statistics Portugal's website, in an electronic version (PDF and XLS), free of charge. On a side note, the last issue published on paper had a unit price of €8.80 and an annual subscription of €84.48. At 93 years of age, the BME reinvents itself once again and begins a new chapter of its vigorous existence: the first issue of 2022 presents a new graphic approach and includes the summary of the press releases published by Statistics Portugal in the respective month, organised in a thematic approach. The bilingual version (PT/EN), which was abandoned in the 1990s, has been reintroduced and the statistical information is lavishly illustrated for faster reading. The statistical tables (in XLS and CSV) include a hyperlink to the respective indicators on the Portal, allowing access to the most recent data at each consultation, a process already successfully adopted in the Statistical Yearbook of Portugal. We conclude with the words used in the Introduction of the January 1993 volume, which also acknowledged a remodelling: "To improve and perfect the BME, now renewed, Statistics Portugal requests and acknowledges users for any suggestions or criticisms they may have". January of 2022 Francisco Lima President of the Board
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