According to the results of an assessment conducted in 2018, strategic planning in the area of agriculture has been identified as one of the major challenges faced in the OECS Member States. Consequently, OECS launched the project named “Enhancing Institutional Capacities in Statistical Data Collection and Analysis in the Agricultural Sector in OECS Member States” with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). The project aims to facilitate agricultural strategic planning through the improvement of rural data collection.
This workshop has been implemented to tackle the lack of statistics which are critical for decision making in the OECS Member States. Thanks to the support of the FAO, we will be able to develop a document which will give us a medium to long term directions for the development of rural statistics in the Eastern Caribbean. Programme Officer of Agriculture at the OECS George Alcee said.
This 3-day workshop followed the inception workshop held in Saint Lucia in February 2019 and enabled 20 experts from the OECS Member States to strengthen their capacities in 3 main areas including:
- understanding of the Strategic Plan for Agricultural and Rural Statistics (SPARS) process and the expected support and role of the country focal points in the exercise;
- creation of a common agriculture module for the Plant Health Committee (PHC), under the guidance and technical support of the FAO;
- design of questionnaires to meet data needs in the agricultural sector.
Some OECS Member States have not been able to conduct agricultural surveys since 2007. Hence, this workshop was held timely in light of ongoing preparations for the census within the National Statistics Offices (NSO) scheduled to be launched in the next two years.
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