The Third Meeting of the Heads of the National Statistical Institutions of BRICS was held on September 25, Beijing. The heads from the statistical institutions of BRICS, representatives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China (MFA), and relevant embassy officials of other countries in China attended the meeting. Mr. Ma Jiantang, Commissioner of NBS, attended the meeting and gave a speech, Mr. Li Kexin, Counsellor, representative of MFA, addressed in the Meeting. The Meeting gave a summary and carried through the discussion on the "BRICS Joint Statistical Publication" which co-edited by the BRICS countries, and conducted a special seminar on household survey. Mr. Xu Xianchun, Deputy-Commissioner of NBS, presided the meeting.
The Meeting unanimously agreed the summary report on “BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2011” made by Mr. Ma Jiantang, and gave a high evaluation to the Manual. Dr. S.K. Das, Director General, Central Statistical Organization of India (CSO), gave special thanks to the efforts made by the Chinese counterparts in the edition of “BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2011”, and those efforts promoted statistical manual editing to a new level. Mr. Alexander Surinov, Head, Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation (ROSSTAT), congratulated the editing and publishing of the Manual 2011 successfully, expressed that the Manual 2011 played an important role in preparation by the Russian government in The 2011 BRICS Summit which took place in Sanya on the island of Hainan, China, in April. Mr. Shen Youyou, Secretary of Embassy of Brazil to China, on behalf of the Government of Brazil, expressed that the “BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2011” was especially popular in the Government departments in Brazil, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) has asked for the English version of the Manual four times to meet the growing needs from different ministries of Brazil
The editing and printing of the “BRICS Joint Statistical Publication” is an important cooperation mechanism to the BRICS countries, the purpose is to provide statistical information to the BRICS Summit. According to the agreements and rules at previous Meeting of the Heads of the National Statistical Institutions of BRICS, the “BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2011” was edited by NBS. NBS attached great importance, studied and made a number of improvement measures, organized related professionals in 16 departments of NBS involving in this work, which lasted five months of careful compilation to complete. The Manual is comprehensive covered demographic, economic, social, energy and resources,and people’s livelihood, etc.
According to the general arrangement, “BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2012” will be edited by CSO. Dr. S.K. Das was specifically presented plans and ideas related to the work and ideas. The Meeting endorsed the principle of India's overall plans and arrangements, delegates from other countries also proposed recommendations to revise and to improve the plan.
Mr. Ma Jiantang pointed out that, the successfully editing and printing the Manual was not only further demonstrated the functions and the roles of the Government Statistics, but also won a high reputation and wide supports for the future cooperation between statistical institutions of BRICS. Mr. Ma hoped that the Manual will get further improvements in the editing, design and quality by the statistical institutions of BRICS, which to make the 2012 Version much better!
According to the suggestion of NBS, the Meeting also conducted a household survey symposium. Household survey is one of important current surveys, which focus on the income and expenditure, reflecting the distribution of income and quality of life, is an important foundation work to develop GDP and CPI weights accounting, and an important basis for Government in formulating policies which related to the people's livelihood. The experts from NBS and other statistics institutions of BRICS carried through the topics in details such as: household survey challenges, data convergence between household survey and consumer expenditure in national accounts, household survey sample bias, and self-owned housing rent estimation methods.
Mr. Ma Jiantang noted that, along with the increasingly large amount of floating population in China, and the public is paying more attention to protection of personal information, and other factors, the household survey becomes more and more difficult. NBS positively reform and improve the household survey system, drawing on the successful implementation of national household surveys and useful experience to better meet the challenges. NBS decided to accelerate the integration of urban and rural household survey reform to meet the needs in both areas in order to better implement the scientific concept of development, gradual establishment of a unified, covering all the geographical and population sampling frame for household surveys, to speed up the application of the modern information technology in the household survey.
BRICS Statistical Commissioner’s Conference was held annually. Through this platform, the BRICS countries could exchange their statistical work, and explore effective ways to solve the new problems and challenges during the work in response, which enhance the statistical capacities and give full play to the functions and great benefits to the countries and governments of the BRICS.
Director-Generals and related persons for nearly a hundred people of NBS, attended the meeting.
Related links: BRICS Joint Statistical Publication 2011
