Mr. Ma Jiantang Participated in the 43rd Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission
Mr. Ma Jiantang Participated in the 43rd Session
of the United Nations Statistical Commission
Signed the Sino-British Statistical Cooperation Memorandum
Visited Canada and the IMF
The 43rd Session of the UN Statistical Commission was held at the UN Headquarter, New York from 28 February to 2 March 2012. The China Statistical Delegation headed by Mr. Ma Jiantang, Commissioner of NBS, participated in the Session. Mr. Ma Jiantang was elected as the Vice-Chairman of the Commission. During the Session, Mr. Ma Jiantang carried out extensive exchanges with heads of national statistical offices and international organizations. Prior to this, the Delegation headed by Mr. Ma Jiantang visited the Statistics Canada, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
On the morning of February 28, Ms. Gabriella Vukovich, President of Hungarian Central Statistical Office (HCSO) was elected as the Chair of the Commission, Mr. Ma Jiantang and the other two persons were elected as the Vice-Chairs. The Session focused on 15 topics, including population and housing censuses, national accounts, agricultural statistics, environmental-economic accounting, information and communication technology statistics, national quality assurance frameworks, statistics of human development, and etc.. The Commission also listened to a brief introduction of goods and services trade statistics, ICP, the global geographic information management system from the expert groups of UN or international organizations.
Mr. Ma Jiantang made comments and remarks on a number of topics discussed, introduced the development of the China statistics, and offered proposals on the current and future statistical work programs of the international statistical community. When discussing the topic of the adoption of core framework of environmental and economic accounting as international standards, Mr. Ma Jiantang pointed out that, the core framework need to clearly stated as an interim standard, and need to be revised and improved based on the views of the majority countries in the future; the core framework was not mature; given the immaturity of the framework, developing countries need mot strictly apply it during the implementation; they should be allowed for certain flexibility and changes, or to make special technical treatment based on their statistical capacity. The opinions of Mr. Ma was voiced by the representatives from many developing and developed countries, and was also reflected in the Report on the Session and in the documentation of core framework of the United Nations Environmental and Economic Accounting.
On February 29, the “Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Statistics Between the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China and the Statistics Authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" was signed by Mr. Ma Jiantang and Ms. Jil Matheson, National Statistician, UK Statistics Authority. According to the Memorandum, both sides will strengthen the cooperation in three domains: quality control and evaluation in the whole process of the survey project, collection and use of administrative records, and statistical information system management.
During the Session, Mr. Ma Jiantang also met with Messers. Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General of UN, Paul Cheung, Director of UNSD, Enrico Giovannini, President of the Italian National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT), Ms. Martine Durand, Director, OECD Statistics Directorate, Mr. Shyam Upadhyaya, Chief Statistician of the UNIDO, and exchanged views with the above countries and international organizations for further development on statistical cooperation.
Prior to this, the China Statistical Delegation headed by Mr. Ma Jiantang, visited Statistics Canada and CIDA, from February 22 to 23. Messrs. Ma Jiantang and Mr. Wayne Smith, Chief Statistician of Canada, highly evaluated the achievements of the Sino-Canadian Statistical Cooperation Project II, finished the framework documents of Sino-Canadian project workshop which will be held in May 2012 in China, and expressed the wishes on the continuing cooperation in the future. The both sides also had a depth discussion on the statistical production process, the application of information and communication technology in the statistical production process, the overall development plan being implemented by Statistics Canada, statistical metadata.
On February 24, Mr. Ma Jiantang visited the IMF, met with Mr. Zhu Min, Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, and reached a consensus on matters of the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), and personnel training cooperation.
On the invitation of Mr. Zhang Yesui, Ambassador of China to the USA, Mr. Ma Jiantang introduced the domestic economic situation of China to the staff of the Embassy.
China statistical delegation also attended the 6th Meeting of the Executive Board of the International Comparison Programme, the Meeting of the Statistical Advisory Panel on Human Development Report, Bureau Meeting of the ESCAP Committee on Statistics, Meeting of the Governing Council of the United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific, and other activities.
Messrs. Du Weiqun, Director-General, Department of International Cooperation, Ji Fengxiang, Director-General, Department of Statistical Design and Management, Zhao Yuncheng, Deputy Director-General, International Statistical Information Center, Ms. Karen CHAN Ka Lin, Assistant Commissioner of Census and Statistics Department of HK SAR as the members of the Chinese Delegation, participated in the Session. Mr. Feng Nailin, Director-General, Department of Population and Employment Statistics, participated in part of the activities of the Session. Messrs. Du Weiqun, Director-General, Department of International Cooperation, Song Yuezheng, Director-General, Department of Trade and External Economic Relations Statistics, Xu Jianyi, Director-General, Data Management Center, Guo Hongbo, Director-General, Hebei Provincial Bureau of Statistics, Ye Jianfu, Director-General, Survey Office of the National Bureau of Statistics in Guangdong, formed the members of the Delegation for the visit to Canada.