Third Meeting of the OIC Statistical Working Group (OIC_SWG)
Date: 26 December 2010
Venue: Jeddah - Saudi Arabia

The Third Meeting of the OIC Statistical Working Group (SWG) was held at the Headquarters of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 26 December 2010. The representatives of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) General Secretariat, Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC), Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Islamic Centre for Development of Trade (ICDT), Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) and Central Department of Statistics and Information (CDSI) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia participated in the Meeting.

The Meeting started with the opening statements of the Dr. Ahmet Tıktık, Vice President (Corporate Services) and Acting Chief Economist of IDB, Dr. Savaş Alpay, Director General of the SESRIC, and Dr. Abdullateef Bello, Director of Data Resources and Statistics Department of IDB. They emphasized on the strengthening and improvement of coordination of statistical activities among the OIC Institutions and the need to accelerate the implementation of the activities related to the previous meetings of OIC-SWG. They also pointed out the importance of availability of high quality data for assessing and quantifying the impact of economic crisis and raising awareness in the field of statistics. In the meeting Dr. Alpay, proposed the idea of developing a specific statistical capacity index for the OIC Member Countries, as well as convening the OIC-SWG future meetings in line with the sessions of the OIC Statistical Commission in order to have a higher participation rate from the NSOs of the OIC member countries.

After the inaugural session, the OIC-SWG-3 participants presented a number of technical papers followed by discussions on the following themes: (i) Scorecard on OIC-SWG activities: Where do we stand on coordination, harmonization, and standardization?; (ii) Institutional Progress Report on OIC-SWG Activities and New Statistical Initiatives; (iii) OIC Statistical Commission: Issues and preparation, (iv) and Joint Statistical Publications for the OIC-Summit.

At the end of the technical sessions, the OIC-SWG-3 agreed on;

  • collectively working together to advance and strengthen partnership through coordination, collaboration, and cooperation in all areas of statistical activities needed to support various initiatives of the OIC, its subsidiaries, and Member Countries taking into account the OIC Ten-Year Programme of Action,
  • urging NSOs of the OIC Member Countries to treat SWG members as partners and to provide timely data to enable them to report accurate, reliable, and consistent data in their publications
  • organizing both the 1st OIC-Statistical Commission (OIC-SC-1) and the 4th SWG (OIC-SWG-4) Meetings in 2011 by SESRIC.

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