Joint Press Statement
The Seventh ASEAN Heads of Statistical Offices Meeting (AHSOM7)
21-22 November 2006, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
Introduction
1. We, the ASEAN Heads of Statistical Offices, convened our seventh meeting in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, to exchange views on recent developments in statistics and review statistical developments and progress of our cooperation in support of the ASEAN initiatives towards an ASEAN Community.
2. Mrs. Hajah Rosni Haji Tungkat, Deputy Director General, Department of Economic Planning and Development of the Prime Ministers Office , Brunei Darussalam chaired our meeting. Dato Paduka Haji Kamis Bin Haji Tamin, Permanent Secretary, Prime Ministers Office, Brunei Darussalam, delivered a Keynote Message.
Progress of ASEAN Cooperation in Statistics
Support for ASEAN Initiatives, Planning and Policy Making
3. We reiterated our commitment to support ASEAN initiatives towards an ASEAN Community and assured our support and cooperation to the development of an ASEAN Community Progress Monitoring System, in recognition of the importance of providing users in the policy areas with a proper management tool for progress monitoring.
4. To enhance our support to the ASEAN initiatives, we agreed to review the current ASEAN Statistical Indicators (ASI) framework to ensure its adequacy in serving as a reference for the development of regional statistics, and to develop a roadmap for the development of ASEAN regional statistics taking into consideration the National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) with a view to ensuring accelerated and balanced statistical development within and among the national statistical systems and of promoting information sharing and advocacy among the stakeholders.
5. To forge partnership with users in the policy areas and ensure greater political support, we agreed to strengthen AHSOM institutional arrangement by providing a more direct coordination link with the Senior Economic Officials Meeting (SEOM) and having AHSOM report to the Leaders through SEOM and the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM).
6. Along the above line, we agreed to institutionalize the ASEAN Statistical Yearbook into the AHSOM mechanism and report its publication to the AEM through SEOM.
Harmonization of Statistics
7. We are pleased to announce the extensive cooperation among the ASEAN Member Countries (AMCs) through our country plan to adapt the ASEAN Common Industrial Classification (ACIC) and ISIC Rev.4 and to use as a reference the Guidelines for Expansion/Revision developed under the initiative on harmonization of statistical classifications. We further agreed to pursue harmonization of other statistical classifications and improvement of comparability of statistics in general.
8. To provide a concrete contribution to the promotion of comparability of statistics, we reassured our support and cooperation in promoting the comparability of manufacturing industry statistics, pursued under the AEM-METI Economic and Industrial Cooperation Committee Working Group on Statistics (AMEICC WGS). We are also of the view that the region should assure its support and cooperation to the initiatives to promote integration of ASEAN and the East Asia, including the initiative to expand comparability study of manufacturing industry statistics to include Japan, China, and Republic of Korea.
Adoption of International Standard and Good Practices
9. To enhance capacities in the implementation of the System of National Accounts (SNA) 1993, we agreed to pursue the initiative towards the establishment of a regional forum on SNA 1993 in collaboration with international agencies, and to explore ways to develop a more structured regional cooperation.
10. In line with the 2010 World Population and Housing Census round, we also agreed to pursue the initiative towards the establishment of an email forum on population and housing census, and to explore ways towards a wider cooperation on social statistics, should the need arise.
Capacity Building and Human Resource Development
11. We acknowledged with appreciation the achievement made in establishing a sound foundation for development of International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) and Statistics on International Trade in Services (SITS), by helping develop a regional work plan on IMTS and on SITS and in establishing task forces in these two fields of statistics. We are also working to fast track SITS development to make it more comparable.
12. We reiterated our support and cooperation to the forthcoming EC-ASEAN Statistical Capacity Building Programme and are pleased to see the development under the various parties involvement that has led to sound foundation for effective implementation of this forthcoming EC-ASEAN Programme. We also discussed a number of strategic issues, foreseen to potentially affect the effectiveness of this programme.
Hosting of the ASEAN Heads of Statistical Offices Meeting (AHSOM)
13. We expressed our thanks and deep appreciation to the Government of the Brunei Darussalam, in particular the Department of Economic Planning and Development (JPKE) of the Prime Ministers Office and other cooperating agencies, for the excellent arrangements made for the meeting and for the warm hospitality accorded to us during AHSOM7.
14. We agreed to meet in Cambodia in late 2007.
?
