The State of Qatar shall participate in the forty-eighth session of the United Nations Statistical Commission to be held at the UN headquarters in New York city during the period 7-10 March 2017. The Qatari delegation will be headed by Dr. Saleh M. Al-Nabit, Minister of Development Planning and Statistics.
By participating in the forty-eighth session, the State of Qatar aims to learn about the latest developments related to the Sustainable Development Agenda and the indicators approved by The United Nations Statistical Commission to measure the countries progress towards achieving the economical, social and environmental goals of the agenda. The Qatari delegation to the meeting will discuss the proposed mechanisms to upgrade the national statistical systems and methodologies, to articulate effective statistical policies that take into consideration the national and international needs of the sustainable development process, and to benefit from the technical support provided by the UN and its organizations.
The 48th session agenda covers several important topics related to the role of statistical data in the sustainable development process, the development of statistical data methodologies and sources, and methods of dissemination and access to users in a timely manner. The session will further discuss the Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics that will enable the countries to promote and upgrade the statistical process and to support the mentioned development agenda effectively; as well as other important topics related to the system of national accounts, prices, environmental-economic accounting, statistical and international commerce classifications, climate and disability statistics, ICT statistics and big data as a new source of official statistics.
The meeting will discuss several other important issues such as the quality assurance in the global statistical system, and will shed light on the basic principles of official statistics and prepare for the next round of household surveys, as well as discuss several other related topics.
On the sidelines of the 48th session, Dr. Saleh Al-Nabit, Minister of Development Planning and Statistics is scheduled to meet a number of heads of regional and international statistical agencies and consult with them on the latest updates on upgrading the statistical process, as well as exchange experiences and share successful lessons.
Dr. Al-Nabit will also meet the director of the United Nations Statistics Division and the director of the UN Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics to consult and agree on the start date of the implementation of the project of official statistics transformation in Qatar, which is expected to be launched by next April. This project is based on the request of the UN to the State of Qatar to join the project of Transformative Agenda for Official Statistics being a leading state in this field.
