Press Release No. 99/55

Press Release: IMF, OECD, UN and World Bank Experts Call for Better Statistics to Fight Poverty

November 19, 1999

Global efforts to fight poverty and promote better lives for millions of the world's poor would be more effective if developing countries had better statistics, said development experts from developing countries and donor agencies meeting in Paris today.

Developing countries and donors agreed to launch a shared international strategy to ensure adequate funding and support for national statistical systems. The strategy is called PARIS21 (PARtnerships In Statistics for development in the 21^st Century) to reflect the commitment to bringing all the development partners together to make a real difference in providing statistics for evidence-based policy making.

Participants agreed to:

• Initiate statistical capacity-building programs in HIPC countries qualifying for enhanced debt relief by the end of 2000, as part of their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers or in other countries producing Comprehensive Development Frameworks and/or UN Development Assistance Frameworks.

• Create a PARIS21 consortium to continue the dialogue of the meeting among the organizers and participants to promote well co-ordinated, effective statistical initiatives at the national, regional and international levels and to provide an annual "state of progress" report to the UN Economic and Social Council.

In a keynote speech¹, UK Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, said better statistics could lock the international system into invincible progress towards meeting shared development goals.

"Good statistics allied to appropriate government policies can change things radically and for the better. Awareness of civil society can be raised by statistics on poverty: you can 'shock your own society' into action as happened in Britain at the start of this century. Development talk is full of statistics but they are often old and unreliable and thus fail to capture the policies that produce progress or failure until it is much too late. Badly informed decisions particularly affect poor people."

Better, more reliable statistics are an essential element in improving the ability of national governments to formulate appropriate policies, manage their own economic and social development, and monitor improvements in their living standards. Too often, out-dated, missing or unreliable information leads to badly informed decisions, which waste resources and incur high financial and human costs. For example, two-fifths of the world's children live in countries where its not known how many children are at primary school.

Ambitious but achievable targets for reducing poverty have been set out in the international development goals² drawn from the United Nations conferences and summits held this decade. These provide a focus for international development efforts. But they are meaningless without the information needed to plan and monitor progress. The donor community must help developing countries build sustainable statistical capacities.

Recent decisions to accord wider, deeper and faster debt relief for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) hasten the need for good quality statistical information. Clear indicators of progress in reducing poverty are now a requirement for the new comprehensive approach to debt reduction and development.

Participants at the meeting came from a wide range of developing countries, international agencies and donor countries. They agreed that it is vital for developing countries to acquire the right statistical tools to plan and monitor progress in reducing poverty, and to warn where efforts are failing to produce results.

Mr. Keith Muhakanizi, Director Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Uganda noted that "No matter whether you are a politician, farmer, industrialist, businessman, or economist, you need reliable information upon which to base current policy and future plans. We live in a world of infinite demands on finite resources. Government must therefore ask itself where the marginal dollar of expenditure will have maximum impact. In primary health, should we focus on outreach activities to inform society of the dangers of malaria and the measures to avoid it, or should we increase expenditure on child immunization programs? In primary education, which is most beneficial to our children, more books or more teachers?"

Dr. O.O. Ajayi, Director-General of the Federal Office of Statistics, Nigeria--addressing the meeting on 18 November, which is National Statistics Day in Africa--described the problems of producing statistical information. Statistical offices in some developing countries lack computers, communication facilities, and reliable power supplies. More crucially, staff are poorly trained, turnover is high and "in my country the culture of record keeping within the government is completely dead." To correct these problems he said, "There should be a huge, internationally co-ordinated effort to support and monitor data production programs in developing countries".

Mr. Miguel Urrutia, General Manager of the Bank of the Republic, Colombia, described why his country took an early decision to subscribe to the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard³ : "to give foreign investors all the relevant data on the Colombian economy within a policy of transparency. It was believed that a lack of transparency would discourage foreign investment and capital flows, and in some cases lead to volatility in those flows. In addition to the production of quarterly GNP and balance of payments figures, which were a very important new input for macroeconomic and monetary policy, probably the most valuable by-product of subscription to the SDDS was to foster close collaboration among different agencies that had previously produced inconsistent statistics in an uncoordinated way. In other areas statistical output leaves much to be desired, for example, data on coverage of different population groups in the health sector. At present the statistics on coverage are inflated, and the lack of cost data leads to large inefficiencies."

Mr. Guest Charumbira from Botswana, who is Chairman of the UN Statistics Commission, demonstrated the advantages of regional co-operation in Southern Africa, with the help of Statistics Sweden and other donors: "The general decline in technical assistance in the field of statistics in recent years calls for new innovations to assist developing countries to be self-reliant in the production of official statistics. The 2000 round of population and housing censuses is therefore being undertaken as a joint venture in the Southern African Development Community region and is co-ordinated by South Africa. Eight members of the Community are planning a census during 2000-2002. The aim of the project is to ensure that the countries of the region produce comparable statistics. It involves mainly the training of statisticians from the SADC countries in the various aspects of census taking and is funded by the UNFPA and executed by the United Nations Statistics Division."

Mr. Vladimir Sokolin, General Director of the Russian National Statistical Agency described his country's 5-year program for statistical renewal that is being financed with a $30 million loan from the World Bank. The project is targeted at developing a new model of the country' s statistical system to build on positive experience accumulated by Russian statistics and adopt new international statistical practices. The reform will restructure the entire informational space of Russia, embracing all types of statistical data collected and processed by the National Statistical office and other ministries and agencies. It is a large-scale and long-term process. The first stage will address: new statistical classifications and standards; data collection and dissemination; planning and management; training; and updating supporting IT systems in order to meet user demands for improved dissemination.

In deciding on next steps, Ambassador Wibisono, Senior Vice-President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), noted ECOSOC's crucial role as "the only forum where all actors--Governments (from developing and developed countries), the UN system--the World Bank, the IMF, regional commissions--, OECD/DAC, and--increasingly, NGOS--may come together to work, from a broad perspective, on indicators and statistical capacity building." He concluded, "The strong spirit of partnership and of shared challenges that pervaded our meeting gives me confidence that in the coming few years, we can make some clear progress in achieving better and more co-ordinated statistical capacity building and indicators."

In concluding the meeting, Mr. Jean-Claude Faure, Chairman of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, noted that "The twenty-first century will be the information age, but the success of all countries will depend on widespread access to that information and its quality."

The agenda of the meeting and a list of participants are available on request.

¹See www.dfid.gov.uk

²These goals call for reducing the rate of extreme poverty by one-half, reducing infant and child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters, and achieving 100 percent enrolment in primary education, all by the year 2015. In addition, equal enrolments of girls and boys in primary and secondary schools are to be achieved by the year 2005. Other indicators being closely monitored include child malnutrition, the literacy rates of young adults, HIV prevalence, access to safe water, and carbon dioxide emissions.

³For details of the SDDS and the General Data Dissemination System see http://dsbb.imf.org