The Government Statistician, Dr. Grace Bediako, has called for comprehensive information on the agricultural sector to determine shortfalls and surpluses in food production.
“These data should only not be available somewhere within the national statistical system, but should be systematically compiled and disseminated for easy access to all who would need them”, she said.
Dr. Bediako made the official launch of the countrySTAT. Ghana, in Accra on Thursday 3rd December, 2009 and said “Ghana was one of the 17 countries participating in the project which sought to improve the availability and accessibility of quality statistics on food and agriculture related issues.
She said the project would also facilitate the gathering and dissemination of agriculture statistics for all stakeholders, adding that government’s quest to increase agriculture productivity and output in order to reduce poverty “requires the ability to measure accurately what is produced and the provision of information on how things are produced”.
She said the countrySTAT framework provided the tool for organizing, harmonizing and standardizing national food and agriculture data from various sources, integrating them on a common platform through a combination of statistics and information technology.
Dr Bediako said the project was to improve upon the quality, accessibility of national statistics on food and agriculture in sub-Saharan African countries.
Ms Diana Templeman, the Technical Team Coordinator of food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and Regional Officer for Africa, said the organization attach great importance to statistical information and capacity building of member nations.
The FAO is therefore committed to the development and implementation of integrated systems of data and metadata on food and agriculture,” she said and commended the government of Ghana and Ghana Statistical Service for their emphasis and commitment to food and agricultural statistics. As part of the occasion the countrySTAT website was launched with address of www.countrystat.org.
Source: Ghanaian Times, Saturday December 5, 2009.
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