Mr. Vice Minister of Agriculture; Mr. Assistant Director General of FAO; Mr. Commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics; Mr. Ambassador of Italy in China; Dear colleagues and friends:

 

It is a great honour and pleasure for me to attend this International Seminar because it bears witness to the successful completion of one of the major statistical operations in the world.

 

The outputs of the First Agricultural Census are crucial for China, and also extremely relevant at the international level, in terms of knowledge acquired on global agricultural production and food security.

 

About fifteen years ago, planning and financing for the First Agricultural Census in China began, and the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) was asked to provide advice. We fully supported the project financed also by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In fact, we believe that statistical cooperation is instrumental for better planning and developing other fields of cooperation, for offering the necessary information for the strategic planning of resources, for allowing the establishment of monitoring and evaluation systems, as well as for strengthening institution building processes.

 

On the basis of these assumptions, several other Italian cooperation programmes that have followed were aimed at strengthening the statistical capacity partner countries, for example, those conducted with the technical support of ISTAT in Mozambique, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ethiopia and Palestine.

 

Nevertheless, the issues that have been addressed in the present project in terms of dimension, organization and quality controls go far beyond the activities normally carried out for any standard statistical survey, giving us the opportunity to learn and better appreciate technical and methodological aspects linked to the production and management of large sets of data.

 

The task has been a tremendous one: around seven million trained enumerators and supervisors interviewed over 214 million households in more than 740 000 villages. The national cost was around US$195 million, and the Italian contribution amounted to approximately US$16.4 million. We estimate the return rate to be much more consistent than the proportion of funds respectively employed, considering the organizational capabilities and statistical skills acquired by official statistics in China. We have already benefited from such developments in on-going cooperation projects in China, mainly financed by the European Union.

For these reasons I want to express my deep thanks to our Chinese colleagues for their commitment, engagement and leadership.

 

We have also to consider that an increased and strengthened capacity and transparency in the production and dissemination of statistical information provides both government users and the people good cause to have more confidence in statistics for decision-making procedures and the evaluation of results.

 

On the basis of such successful cooperation, a few years ago Chinese and Italian statistical institutes signed a memorandum of understanding to further develop this collaboration into a partnership, starting work in other fields, such as the definition of a legal framework for a national statistical system, the development of science and technology statistical indicators and the analysis of the unobserved economy. A new agreement was signed yesterday to develop collaboration in the area of environmental statistics and agricultural accounts.

 

In conclusion, let me say that I am very proud of having taken part in the First Agricultural Census in China, one of the greatest statistical operations ever to be completed.

 

I heartily wish the seminar full success.

 

Over the past two years, the release of and analytical research work on the census results have borne plentiful results, owing to the common efforts of both Chinese and foreign experts. During the following four days, all the experts present will undertake a complete analysis, and discuss the results of the census. The themes: development of Chinese agricultural and rural development and reform of agricultural statistics will be taken. I would like to take this occasion to express my heartfelt thanks to the organizers of the seminar, to those presenting papers, and to all those who have contributed their hard work, and wish the seminar, under the considerate organization of the Government of Italy, FAO, and the Government of China, along with the active and keen participation of the representatives of the seminar, a complete success.

 

Thank you.