Improving Agricultural Statistics in the COMCEC Region
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 The SWOT analysis conducted in the case study countries showed that the main
weaknesses of the agricultural statistics systems in COMCEC Member Countries were
stated as poor organization, lack of resources and scope of statistics. Existence of a
legal base, regular budget allocations, well-qualified staff, awareness of the issues,
openness to international collaboration were stated as the strengths. As far as threats
are concerned, political instability, political pressure on statistics, lack of interest in
statistics, size of informal sectors, and lack of coordination are among the top issues
raised. Finally, the case study members mentioned remote sensing and GIS technology,
CountrySTAT, increasing donor support, developments in information and
communication technologies, periods of main surveys and censuses, and growth of
agricultural markets as opportunities to be exploited.
 Having identified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats it can be
summarized that the needs mentioned are: more resources, mainly in terms of
physical infrastructure and IT; better coordination, dissemination calendars, improved
dissemination outlets; and qualified and competent human resources, consultancies
and continuous training.
 It can be said that COMCEC Member Countries are not immune to the problems faced
with agricultural statistics all over the world. However, they are not significantly
better or worse than the rest of the developing world. There are wide variations
among member states in terms of agricultural statistical capacities, due to differences
in statistical infrastructures, resources allocated, methodologies used, outputs
produced and disseminated. The Index of Agricultural Statistics Development
constructed as part of this study is a tool to observe these differences in a systematic
way.
 Nine of the COMCEC Members are classified to have well-developed agricultural
statistics. Eleven members of COMCEC have been classified to have fairly developed
agricultural statistics open to limited improvement. The third group of seventeen
COMCEC Member Countries has less developed agricultural statistics systems and
need major improvement. The remaining twenty COMCEC Member Countries have
severe problems with their agricultural statistics and are in need of serious
improvement efforts (Table 38).
 In the lowest IASD category, 55 percent of countries are from the Arab group. The
shares of African and Asian group countries are 20 and 25 percent respectively. In the
top IASD category, on the other hand, 44 percent are from the African group and 22
and 33 percent from Arab and Asian groups. Therefore, the Arab group shows the
worst performance with the lowest share in high IASD category while having the
highest share in lowest IASD category (Table 39).
 In the African group, 24 percent of the countries are in the lowest IASD category, 24
percent are in the highest, and the remaining 52 percent are in-between. In the Arab
group, 50 percent of the countries are in the lowest IASD category, only 9 percent in
the highest and the remaining 41 percent are in-between. In the Asian group,