Improving Agricultural Statistics in the COMCEC Region
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28 percent of the countries are in the lowest, 17 percent in the highest and the
majority (55 percent) is in-between (Table 39).
 A country with high income can have good agricultural statistics and a country with
low income can have poor agricultural statistics, as expected. On the other hand, a
country with high income can have poor agricultural statistics and a country with low
income can have good agricultural statistics. Some countries such as Gambia,
Afghanistan and Somalia require serious capacity building but do not have the
financial resources to do so. Some countries like Turkey are in a position to provide
both financial and technical support for capacity building in the area of agricultural
statistics. Some countries can provide a limited amount of technical as well as financial
support. These countries will, at least, not require any financial or technical support.
Other countries, on the other hand, require serious technical support and can fund it.
There are countries in need of serious technical support but do not need external
financial resources for the costs of such capacity building. Finally, there are countries
that have the capability to provide technical assistance to other countries but do not
have the luxury to do so for free (Table 40).
4.2 Recommendations
 There is a good environment for cooperation among COMCEC Member Countries.
There are those that have the technical capacity but are short on resources. There are
those that have good resources but are low on statistical capacity. There are those that
have both good resources and statistical capacity, and of course those that are short in
both resources and technical capacity.
 The COMCEC Member Countries are already involved in capacity building activities as
part of SESRIC, various regional bodies like AFCAS and APCAS, as receivers of support
provided by FAO, Regional Development Banks, EU and World Bank. Of course these
should continue with more active participation.
 The OIC Statistical Capacity Building Programme has been initiated in early 2007. It is
a long-term training programme and large scale capacity development project. Within
this framework, SESRIC collects information from National Statistical Offices of OIC
Member Countries through questionnaires, assesses the needs and capacities of the
Member Countries accordingly, and matches these needs and capacities through
organizing short term training programs, courses or workshops. While majority of the
activities are not specifically on agricultural statistics they nevertheless are useful as
statistical principals, tools and techniques are relevant for all domains. It should be
mentioned that SESRIC has recently organized an administrator training on
CountrySTAT attended by 9 COMCEC Members.139
 COMCEC Member Countries should be encouraged to prepare a report on the state of
agricultural statistics in their countries, in a similar format to the case studies in this
study, or in the “panorama” reports in CountrySTAT, “metadata for national
139 SESRIC, 2014b.