GSO Director General Nguyễn Thị Hương, speaks at the 10th session of ASEAN Community Statistical System (ACSS) which took place in the form of a video conference on December 9. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, ASEAN Community Statistical System (ACSS) have carried out many activities and obtained important achievements this year, Phạm Quang Vinh, deputy director of General Statistics Office (GSO) of Việt Nam has said.

He was talking at the 10th session of ASEAN Community Statistical System (ACSS) which took place in the form of a video conference.

Many other statistical activities had been affected by the pandemic, particularly those that require field enumeration. It presented serious and crucial challenges for the timely provision of official statistics, he said.

However ASEAN Member States had continued to provide reliable official statistics with changes to the business process, Vinh added, and increased the utilisation of technology to minimise the impact of the pandemic.

The ACSS had launched the ASEAN SDG indicators baseline report and an online database for  which serves as tool for data submission, processing, and dissemination of ASEAN SDG Indicators. This initiative delivered by Việt Nam as ASEAN chairman in 2020 had been appreciated by the statistic community, international organisation and partners.

The ACSS had adopted the ASEAN-Help-ASEAN Framework for ACSS Capacity Building in sustaining programmes as well as to facilitate greater knowledge and experience sharing among the bloc to speed up the development of statistics at national and regional levels.

The concept note on the use of big data for enhancement of ACSS Official Statistics had also been endorsed. This would strengthen the cooperation in enabling the utilisation of big data, which could play a significant role in improving the timeliness and relevance of official statistics, as well as reducing the costs of statistics compilation.

Vinh attributed the success to close coordination between Việt Nam and ASEAN member countries as well as ASEANStats, realising this year's theme “Cohesively enhancing capacity of ASEAN Community Statistical System to be more responsive to greater data needs”.

Nguyễn Thị Hương, GSO Director General said as the ASEAN Community Statistical System Committee Chair in 2020, in the spirit of "cohesion and responsive", the Government of Việt Nam and other ASEAN member states had shown their courage and determination, making efforts to overcome many difficulties and challenges.

“We have made constant efforts to consolidate, build and develop an ASEAN Community Statistical System that is strong and not only good at expertise, but also can proactively adapt to an unanticipated change of science and technology,” Hương said.

Julia Tijaja, Director of the ASEAN Integration Monitoring Directorate at the ASEAN Secretariat, said the ACSS had gone a long way since its establishment, evolving into a collaborative regional organisation with clear goals in delivering efforts to develop evidence-based policy for the region.

She appreciated ASEAN's agencies for quickly adapting to the new normal state and overcoming challenges not only in organising meetings but also in working processes.

The ACSS had very successfully implemented its priorities in 2020, especially ASEAN SDG Indicators and online database for SDG Indicators, she said, adding that these were also the priority economic issues chaired by Việt Nam. — VNS