14 Jun 2016

The statistician general, Ms Anna Majelantle, has commended the SADC Statistics Committee for its commitment in delivering on its mandate .

Speaking at opening of a three-day SADC Statistics Committee meeting in Gaborone on Monday in Gaborone, Ms Majelantle said the committee had been meeting annually in its quest to assess and monitor performance towards fulfilling its mandate.

She, therefore, said the committee had done a lot over by bringing critical strategic issues to the table for discussion and consensus building. 

Ms Majelantle said a number of statistics projects and programmes had been developed and implemented in the SADC region.

She said some key statistics milestones achieved included  development and implementation of SADC statistics Training Strategy, the Regional Strategy for Development of Statistics (RSDS), SADC Statistical Yearbook, the monthly Harmonised Consumer Price Indices and the Integrated Trade Statistics Database among others.   

“These milestone attest to the committee's commitment to the harmonisation of statistical systems and adoption of common statistical standards in conformity with international best practices to facilitate production of comparable and quality statistical data in the region”, she said amid applause from members.

In the meantime, Ms Majelantle said they owe the success of the SADC Statistics Programme to the support provided by their governments and development partners. 

She therefore said there is no doubt that they are all united in purpose towards their national developments, the regional integration, the broader continental development through the Africa Agenda 2063 and of course, the UN 2030 Development Agenda.

Speaking at the same meeting, SADC secretariat representative Mr Ackim Jere, who is also a senior officer-statistics, said at regional level, statistics is among the cross cutting priority areas and is explicitly recognised as such in the SADC Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP).

He said statistics is one of the special programmes of the harmonisation of statistics; creation of regional statistical database, and capacity building among the focus intervention areas for statistics.

 Mr Jere noted that in order to provide common guidance on development of statistics in the SADC region to member states and other statistics stakeholders, the SADC RSDS was developed under the technical oversight of this committee.

Meanwhile, Mr Jere said to ensure comparability of data and best practice among member states there is need for adherence to existing regional and international statistical frameworks and standards.

 Among them include the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, data Quality Assessment Frameworks, the African Statistics Charter, the African Strategy for Implementation of 2008 System of National Accounts, and the Strategy for the Harmonisation of Statistics in Africa. ENDS