Improving Agricultural Statistics in the COMCEC Region
2
The objective of this study is to review and analyze the state of agricultural statistics in the
COMCEC Region, with respect to organization, coverage, resources, methodology, timeliness
and availability, identify the main constraints and propose steps and policies to improve them.
To be able to put the study in proper perspective, the first chapter is devoted to a discussion on
why agriculture and agricultural statistics are important for the COMCEC Member Countries
and what the new challenges are. It is possible to understand agricultural statistics in the
traditional narrow sense of basically being limited to real variables (production, selected
inputs) and prices (producer and input prices), or in a current wider sense expanding to
markets (input, output, international), environment, economic accounts, food security,
poverty, etc. This chapter summarizes the dimensions, scope and coverage of agricultural
statistics and states the new challenges. The first chapter ends with a review of the norms
setting international organization in agricultural statistics and their initiatives to shape and
improve national agricultural statistics.
The second chapter starts with a review of different indicators developed and used by
different organizations to measure the state of development of the statistical systems or to
assess the quality of statistics produced at different levels. This is followed by a presentation of
the six overall state dimensions that are employed in analyzing and assessing the state of
agricultural statistics in the COMCEC Region and countries. These dimensions are the
statistical environment (legal, institutional), resources (financial, human, physical), as well as
methodology (classifications, sample frameworks), outputs (coverage), timeliness and
availability to users (dissemination). Next is the presentation of the methodology used in data
collection for the assessment of the state of agricultural statistics in the COMCEC Region and its
Member Countries. The assessment is based on empirical evidence compiled from different
sources. The first source is the responses to the Standard Self-Assessment Questionnaire
(SSAQ) sent to Member Countries. The second source is in the form of in-depth reports that are
produced based on the country visits to selected member countries. The third source is from
visits to the web pages of member countries’ ministries of agriculture and national statistics
offices where agricultural statistics are mostly housed, as well as web pages and databases of
international organizations which are involved in agricultural and/or statistics related
activities. Many international organizations including Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO), World Bank (WB), Regional Development Banks and European Union
(EU) conduct similar assessment studies, as have some COMCEC countries. The current study
has benefitted from them to verify and supplement its empirical evidence.
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to the empirical findings of the study. First the
findings of the study based on the results of the SSAQ are presented at the COMCEC Region,
sub-regional (Africa, Asia, Arab) as well as country levels. Chapter two concludes by
presenting an Index of Agricultural Statistics Development (IASD) for COMCEC Member
Countries. The Index is based on (a weighted average of) the six state dimensions (and their
sub-dimensions) and is used to assess the relative state of development of agricultural
statistics in the COMCEC Member Countries. The results are presented in the form of tables,
figures and maps.
Chapter three presents eight case studies which review the general state of and/or a specific
feature of agricultural statistics in selected COMCEC Member Countries. For each of the eight