A wide and dependable statistical information base is essential for all kinds of decision-making processes in any society. To cater for such a need of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Member Countries, the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC) has been established as a subsidiary organ of the OIC with a multifaceted mandate that includes, in particular, the compilation, processing the dissemination of up-to-date and reliable information and statistics on the major social and economic indicators in the member countries.
Since the establishment in 1978, the Centre has been making strenuous efforts to fulfil this specific task at the highest possible level through the publication of various statistical volumes and series both in hard covers and on its web site. The Statistical Yearbook of the OIC Member Countries is being published since 1980. Up to 2006 publication, the Yearbook consisted of two parts. In the first part, information on indicators which are classified according to major socio-economic areas was provided. Statistical Yearbook 2007 keeps this part and covers the period from 1997 to 2006 for 110 indicators under the categories Demography, Labour Force, Health, Education, Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Communication, Tourism, Exports, Imports, Public Finance, Money and Prices, National Accounts and International Finance. In the second part some selected key indicators were reported for each of the 57 OIC Member Countries. Statistical Yearbook 2007 keeps this part as well and reports 23 selected key indicators for the period 1997 to 2006. While determining the indicators, availability of data for each Member Country played a crucial role. This year, a new part is included to the Statistical Yearbook. In this part, trends for some of the important indicators are presented mostly in graphical format under two categories; demographic and social trends and economic trends.
The content of Statistical Yearbook is regularly updated and enriched essentially on the basis of information disseminated through the database of the Centre, BASEIND, which is a user friendly system of downloading data in electronic environment. For BASEIND, data is collected from the national statistical sources. However, in some instances, the Centre still has to recourse to the international sources for missing data. In such cases, special care is exercised in choosing the most reliable and updated sources.
Needless to say, the content and quality of any of our statistical publications can only be improved by the constructive participation and active support of our Member Countries. We are indeed regularly approaching the national statistical institutions in these countries for data, publications and all other related information concerning the socio-economic developments in their economies. Response to our queries and questionnaires is very important for our Centre. We would like here to express our thanks and appreciation to all concerned for their cooperation and support and look forward to receiving their feedback and comments that would help us improve this and all other publications.
