Improving Agricultural Statistics in the COMCEC Region
118
 Deputy Minister of Commerce
 Deputy Minister of Health, Medical Services and Education
 Deputy Director of Management and Planning Organization
 Director of Iran Statistical Center who also serves as the council secretary.
As the most important statistical organization in the country, the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI)
is responsible for formulating and adopting statistical policies, definitions and concepts,
stratification as well as producing statistics through the implementation of censuses and
sample surveys. Secondly, it is also tasked with evaluating and confirming statistics produced
by other organizations. Thirdly, it also prepares and implements diverse surveys for the
calculation of price and implicit indices, provides improvements for the national accounts, and
prepares regional accounts.113
According to its legal obligations, and approvals of High Council of Statistics, the SCI conducts
the following five activities, involving the:
1. Preparation of the essential statistics for satisfying needs of policies and the
programme;
2. Preparation of national accounts and price indices;
3. Supply of statistical information;
4. Coordination and direction of statistical activities; and
5. Execution of research activities.
Lastly, the SCI produces information required for the nation’s planning and development
programmes on manufacturing, mining, agriculture, animal husbandry, population and labour
force, commerce, services, housing and infrastructure.
Institutional Set Up: As declared in the article 5 of the Statistical Law, all government
ministries, agencies, companies and affiliates are obligated to provide the SCI with personnel,
transportation, communication tools and other equipment, that are required to conduct
general censuses for a specific duration, in the manner as set out by the board of ministers.114
In 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Information Technology
Organization of Iran (Ministry of ICT) and the SCI. This was in line with the expansion of
statistical cooperation between SCI and other Iranian government organizations, and aimed to
promote the contribution in the materializing goals of Iran (as stipulated in the Fifth
Development Plan) in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and to
promote Iran's rank in the international ICT scalar.115
Regarding the compilation of agricultural statistics; after the National High Council of Statistics
decides on the priority, two main institutions – the SCI and the Ministry of Jihad-e-Agriculture
(MJA) – are the responsible governmental bodies for collecting and disseminating the
agricultural statistics in Iran. The SCI is the only leading institution for the statistical
methodology on the collection of agricultural statistics, including being the responsible body
for conducting agricultural censuses. However, the MJA is the operational body in collecting
113 SCI, 2014.
114 Ibid
115 ICT, 2014.