The ISTAT institute, with a staff of about 170 workers, was supposed to update the figures of the censuses that were formerly carried out by the General Statistics Divistion (that were updated only to 1921), by publishing, as a result, the figures of the 6th general population census. After an acceleration of the duties of the institute in the early 30s, the national statistics operations were rather slowed down by the economical fines that had been caused by the Ethiopian offensive, that virtually stopped any further publications of the economical-financial figures.