Mois : janvier 2017

To comply with international regulations is a key to quality in national statistics and a necessary investment to compare with the other countries. This is particularly true in the area of the Balance of payments which reflects the situation of a country vis à vis its exchanges in goods, services and financial assets with the rest of the World.
In 2013, the IMF brought some changes on its manual for the compilation of the Balance of Payments. Since then, countries all over the World have worked at updating their respective national processes to the new rules. If some of the changes were straightforward and were easily mastered by the countries, others concerned some more complex and difficult issues. The workshop organised by MEDSTAT IV, which took place in Brussels on December 13-14, aimed at bringing answers to the questions that the specialists of 8 of the ENP-S countries, responsible at the Statistical Office and at the Central Bank for compiling the Balance of payment, may have had with the implementation of the new regulations.
Experts from the IMF and from Eurostat exchanged views with the participants on the diverse questions that they had and brought to the table the experiences that other countries may have had. At turn, the ENP-S countries presented their methods that were then debated, advices and tips being given by both the experts and the other countries.
The participants left the seminar with a better view of the challenges generated by the new rules and with operational guidance on how to deal with them. The progress made will be assessed in a year period against the benchmarks that were presented here in Brussels.
To get more information, please contact MEDSTAT4@expertisefrance.fr.

The MEDSTAT IV project recently organised two sub-regional workshops (Tunis on November 22-23 and Istanbul on December 6-7) to discuss with the ENP-S countries techniques and processes related to creation and the updating of business registers. These registers are crucial tools to assess the vitality and the demography of the business sector in a country as they contain information on the location, the size and the activity of the businesses. Registers are also essential tools for the whole statistical work: they allow drawing reliable samples for tailored business surveys; they are used to estimate and cross-check data on the economic activity, on employment and on external trade, in particular.

The workshops allowed a fruitful exchange of experiences among the ENP-S countries and between the statisticians and the other agencies involved in the maintenance and use of the registers such as the Ministries of Finances, the Social Security agencies and some public companies. The exchanges were extended to other countries, France and Turkey, who presented their respective systems.

The results of the workshops will be consolidated in a publication presenting the state of the art on the business registers in all the ENP-S countries.

For more information on the conclusions of the workshops and on the availability of country data, please contact Medstat4@expertisefrance.fr

Under the MEDSTAT IV project, energy statisticians from the ENP-South countries met in Athens on October 5-7 to share their respective experiences in compiling energy balances. The meeting benefited from the technical expertise from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and from Eurostat who commented the data presented by each country. Energy balances are powerful analytical tools covering all aspects linked to the production, the consumption and the transformation of all energy sources in a country. Having harmonised energy balances for all the ENP-South countries opens the way for regional consolidation of the data as well as for comparative analyses within the region and between the region and other countries.

EU Twinning on Enhancing Official Statistics in Israel
Objectives and outcomes:

The Israeli Central Bureau of statistics (ICBS) has partnered with Statistics Denmark. The project began on March 2016 and will conclude on March 2018 with a budget of 1,200,000 Euros. Throughout the project experts from Denmark and other EU Member States will participate in the project activities and a number of national stakeholders will be involved and benefit from the project.

The overall objective of the Twinning Project is for the ICBS to align official Israeli statistics with standards, guidelines, and best practices from the European Union and from international organizations such as the OECD.

The Twinning Project has four components:

1. Quality management of official statistics- As part of this Twinning Project, ICBS will foster quality management and assessment of official statistics in Israel.

1. Micro-data services to researchers- ICBS will establish a streamline system that will make micro-data access for researchers simpler without compromising the confidentiality and privacy of data.

1. Infrastructures for agricultural statistics- The ICBS and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) will upgrade the agricultural statistics infrastructure in order to improve the quality – and at the same time prepare for the upcoming census.

1. Methodological and geo-special tools for improving the quality and the efficiency of field surveys- ICBS will improve the quality and efficiency of data collection in field surveys by implementing geo-spatial tools

The EU-Israel Twinning Project had a successful opening event in Jerusalem on 13 April 2016. The opening ceremony took place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the participation of high level officials from the EU, Denmark and Israel. As part of the opening ceremony, a Memorandum of Understanding between the National Insurance Institute and the Central Bureau of Statistics was signed. The Memorandum of Understanding is one of the outstanding achievements of our previous Twinning Project that ran from May 2013 to December 2014.

 

Three missions took place during the first quarter where leading experts from Denmark provided expertise on Quality Management, Micro-data services and Methodological tools for improving the quality and the efficiency of field surveys. The three completed missions focused on establishing a basis for the upcoming work.

Gender Statistics workshops in Jordan

Gender statistics was considered a transversal topic in Medstat 2 and 3. This is also the case in the new Medstat 4 project where gender statistics are highly relevant for example in the sectors of the project that deal with Migration and Labour Market as well as Business Statistics. Gender disaggregated data andgender specific indicators in relation to migration and labour statistics would make it possible for the Medstat countries to compare their situation with a special focus on gender and thus gain a better understanding of causes of gender specific problems and potential solutions.

A partnership between The Department of Statistics, Jordan (DoS) and Statistics Denmark was formed under the responsibility and support of The Danish Centre for Gender, Equality and Diversity (KVINFO). The partnership aimed at enhancing the capacity building of DoS employees in the area of Gender Statistics through organizing a number of workshops in order to enhance quality, availability and comprehensiveness of gender disaggregated statistics and gender related indicators for public use, thus enabling DoS to expand the data and information available from various stakeholders and data producers in Jordan as well as improving the role of DoS in analyzing, evaluating and monitoring the effect of developmental efforts on women in Jordan. The workshops targeted Jordanian policy makers, producers of gender statistics as well as users of gender statistics in the local governorates of Jordan such as women’s machinery and relevant civil society, non-governmental and private sector organizations. The participants were more than 60 women and men from all of Jordan’s 12 provinces. During the workshops that lasted between 2 to 3 days Statistics Denmark as well as DoS explained how the two statistical systems work with gender statistics bytelling the story of the process towards gender equality in both countries, and describe the status via statistics on different areas of interest. Participants were actively involved in discussions and provided suggestions on how to improve the laws towards more gender equality, how to design indicators measuring gender equality.

One of the most important outcomes of the workshops was enhancing leadership and networking through a sustained channel of communication and sharing of experiences with other countries on gender issues/statistics and advocacy. Another important outcome of these workshops was the fact that there are many similarities between gender statistics in Jordan and Denmark but also differences. According to Ms. Manal Sweidan, the Head of the Gender Statistics Division at the Department of Statistics in Jordan, Gender statistics make it possible to compare the same issues in different countries and potentially learn from each other and improve understanding which will be used to support the development of evidence-based policies for better gender equality.

Also, Ms. Manal added “As gender issues move forward in national and global agendas, new demands are created for statistics. Policy makers, researchers and advocates request additional data and argue, more generally, that the gender perspective should be a basic assumption guiding which data to collect and to analyze. In this way, gender statistics raise consciousness and provide the impetus for public debate and change”.

by Statistics Denmark

UNDP « Launching Ceremony of the Arab Development Portal », Amman, 25 April 2016

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) have launched the Arab Development Portal (ADP), an open, one-stop, online knowledge platform providing timely data and information on development in the Arab region.

The ADP is a joint collaboration between UNDP and the Coordination Group of Arab National and Regional Development Institutions, the Islamic Development Bank and OFID. It was conceived to address current data gaps and produce a tool that is publicly accessible to a wide range of end-users, from policy-makers to entrepreneurs and journalists.

Read more @: http://www.ofid.org/NEWS/PressRelease/ArticleId/3229/UNDP-and-OFID-launch-Arab-Development-Portal

Information note for Arab Conference on a Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics, 5-7 April 2016 at SESRIC Headquarters in Ankara, Turkey

The Arab Conference on a Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics was organized and hosted by SESRIC in collaboration and partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Statistical Centre for the Cooperation Council for the Arab Countries of the Gulf (GCC-STAT), and Arab Institute for Training and Research in Statistics (AITRS) on 5-7 April 2016 at SESRIC Headquarters in Ankara, Turkey.

Experts from the National Statistics Offices of MEDSTAT IV Countries, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia as well as Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and Turkey attended to the Conference. The representatives of Eurostat and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) also participated in the Conference.

The Conference organized as a High-Level Forum of official statisticians to seek a broad consensus on the strategic framework for statistics. Moreover, it also aimed at formulating an adequate response to the increased demand for detailed and timely data to monitor progress on the goals and targets of the post-2015 development agenda.

The Conference covered five thematic areas of the Transformative Agenda that was identified by the Global Conference held on 15-16 January 2015 in New York and recognized by the UN Statistical Commission at its 46th Session. The thematic areas were:

1. Coordination at and between the global and regional statistical systems;
2. Communication and advocacy;
3. Integrated statistical systems: data collection, processing an dissemination; through integrated statistical systems;
4. Innovation and modernization through standards-based statistical business architecture; and
5. Training and capacity-building.

Text provided by Turkstat

• Data on the sectors covered by the MEDSTAT projects and that are the subject of a regular exchange with the ENP South countries.
• Information on MEDSTAT and MED-HIMs, access to the 2015 publication of Euro-Mediterranean statistics,
• links to the web sites of the ENPS countries’ web sites
• Documents, reports, publications and leaflets
• Statistics Explained on MEDSTAT

• Information on MEDSTAT
• MEDSTAT Newsletters

• Data and methodological information – All ref/links