PUTRAJAYA, Oct 11 — Malaysia, via the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), has been elected as the co-chair of the Regional Advisory Board (RAB) Meeting on International Comparison Programme (ICP) 2021 for Asia and the Pacific, effective on Monday (October 9).
In a statement today, DOSM said Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin reaffirmed its commitment to providing reliable data and ensuring the successful completion of the current ICP 2021 cycle and the publication of results by the first quarter of 2024.
“DOSM has shown its milestones for attending all the regional workshops, preparation of items lists based on ICP survey sectors, review and validation of data, preliminary results, and the country’s report,” it said.
The RAB of the ICP is a consultative body comprising experts and representatives from participating countries and organisations within a specific region. The RAB’s primary role is to provide guidance and recommendations to enhance the quality, relevance, and impact of ICP data and analysis within the region.
The ICP, a global initiative coordinated by the World Bank, produces estimates of GDP and its several components based on purchasing power parities (PPPs). It provides real comparisons of economies’ outputs, which are better measurement forms than exchange-rate-based comparisons.
The PPPs derived from ICP have found several uses, including in measuring global poverty and other indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda.
Seven RAB members are from various national implementing agencies in the ICP RAB, including DOSM.
The other RAB members are Cambodia’s National Institute of Statistics, the International Statistical Information Centre of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department, India’s National Statistical Office, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Maldives’s National Bureau of Statistics, and Thailand’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office.
DOSM said since the beginning of 2021, all participating economies have made considerable efforts to collect prices despite a challenging environment due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Alternative methods like phone interviews, emails, and web scraping were introduced in response.
“Despite these challenges, DOSM remains fully committed to ensuring the success of ICP 2021,” it said.
In the ICP for Asia and the Pacific, the RAB is established to advise the ICP Asia and the Pacific regional coordinator, and the board includes representatives of economy-level and regional stakeholders.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is taking the regional lead in implementing ICP Asia and the Pacific, with 22 economies participating in the programme.
— Bernama
