COUNTRYSTAT TANZANIA - PRESS BRIEFING

19/10/2012

CountrySTAT Tanzania through the National Bureau of Statistics organised a three-days meeting of the Technical Working Group to harmonise, update and upload the agricultural statistics for use by different stakeholders. The meeting took place at EDEMA Conference Centre in Morogoro Municipality from 16th to 18th October 2012.

Present at the meeting were 17 representatives from the Agriculture Sector Lead Ministries, Natural Resources, Tanzania Revenue Authority and the National Bureau of Statistics. Two representatives from Zanzibar (Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Office of Chief Government Statistician) were among the TWG participants.

In the working session the TWG had opportunity to assess and validate available data and metadata from different sources and disciplines related to agriculture. The main ouputs of the meeting include the following:

Seven tables were reviewed and uploaded on:

Land use and irrigation
Pesticides
Production
Livestock and fisheries
Machinery (Zanzibar)
Trade
Prices

- Correspondence Table update in progress

- Liaised with sources to correct errors

- Discussed and agreed on data descripancies

- FAOSTAT questionnaire filling in progress

- Food availabilty data harmonisation in progress

- Machinery data hamonisation in progress

This was a follow up meeting capitalising on a successful video conference which was held on 12TH October 2012 which among others helped to refine the ToRs of the TWG meeting.

Speaking at the end of meeting National CountrySTAT Coordinator Ms Joyce Urasa revealed the meeting as successful. She said that during the three-days meeting, most of the issues necessary for quality data were discussed and agreed upon. She pointed out that the TWG members are still working on data related to food availability, pesticides and machinery for harmonisation according to the standard format.

Mr. Marco Gambamala, Representative from the EAC Secretariat as Statistics Experts commented the team spirit of the TWG, which was necesary to get the work done to such an extent.

When winding up the working sesión, Ms Joyce Urasa challenged the TWG members to be at the fore front in utilising data from CountrySTAT. In so doing, they will be the first to identify gaps and work for means to further improve the database.

CountrySTAT Tanzania is a national statistical information system for food and agriculture. The system harmonizes and integrates data on food and agriculture coming from different sources. Through a core database, policy makers and researchers can group data across thematic areas, such as production, trade, consumption and many others, in order to study relationships and processes. The CountrySTAT project is built to provide an easy support to data dissemination and as a common statistical framework to help decision making.

Members of the TWG in their group photo when they convened in Morogoro from 16th -18th October 2012

For further information please visit CountrySTAT website: http://tanzania.countrystat.org/news/en/ email: [email protected]; [email protected]; phone: +255754360258; or +255769239946