APD | Higher quality of life, a common dream among ASEAN members

By APD writer Melo M. Acuña

MANILA,Aug.15(APD)- Secretary Pernia highlighted the need for collaboration and cooperation among ASEAN member countries.

“We need to move as one and utilize our individual strengths to find innovative and transformative solutions that will identify linkages and address the root cause of each problem that we face,” he said.

He called on the conference participants who collect and generate data which “allows for a deeper analysis of the challenges individually and as a regional community” serving policymakers to formulate well-informed and evidence-based policy decisions to solve economic, environmental, and social issues, some of which cannot be handled by a single country alone.

Secretary Pernia said the ASEAN community should exchange notes on best practices in data collection, management and reporting as it needs to be familiar with technologies to produce high-quality and timely statistics.

He stressed the need to have comparable indices to track development goals or progress in achieving development goals.

“In the Philippines, we have started using the multidimensional poverty index which may be adopted by ASEAN as a whole,” he said. Statistics would be required to see the extent of development in the poorest provinces of Brunei-Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines – East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA).

In closing, Secretary Pernia said there is a need to further disaggregate and increase the frequency and comparability of official statistics as initiatives like the Core SDG ASEAN indicators will contribute to identifying development gaps along with other issues aside from monitoring regional progress on sustainable development goals.

“To make all of these possible, we need to strengthen our statistical agencies by increasing technical and financial support for statistical capacity building,” he concluded.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)