The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its partners willwork together to compile statistics for the period up until 2015 at ameeting which opened in Hanoi on December 8.

The two-day meeting has drawn the heads of statistical offices fromeight of the groups 10 members (excluding Brunei and Myanmar) plus theUnited Nations, the EU, Japan, the Republic of Korea and China.

It is the first follow-up to an ASEAN Summit joint statement thatrecognised the framework of cooperation as an important legal foundationfor regional efforts to establish an ASEAN community statistical systemby 2015.

The Acting General Director of VietnamGeneral Statistics Office, Do Thuc, said the 11 th ASEAN Heads ofStatistical Offices Meeting (AHSOM 11) would review the progress made in2010 and difficulties and challenges during the next five years as wellas developing statistics agencies across the bloc.

Also high on the meeting’s agenda are measures to improve the capacityof the ASEAN Statistics committee (ASEAN stats) to make it an importantlink between the statistics agencies of each member as well as betweenthe group and outsiders, including international organisations.

Plans to build mechanisms and commitments to implement sharing andproviding statistics within the grouping and priorities of cooperationwill also be discussed.

The head of ASEAN’s PressOffice, Dr. Aladdin D. Rillo pointed out the important role played bystatistics in socio-economic reforms. Rillo called for furtherimprovement in regional statistics to overcome the limitations andchallenges when processing statistics data by each member and the groupas a whole.

ASEAN’s Secretariat pledged to providemore technical assistance to statistics offices in member nations tomeet ASEAN’s goals.

Statistics have been put under the supervision of the ASEAN secretariat./.