India Hosts Meet on Trade Stats

“Accurate, reliable and timely information plays an important role for effective decision making in almost every aspect of human endeavor. It is an essential ingredient for decisions makers and Policy planners“, said D.V. Sadananda Gowda, while inaugurating the 8th Meeting of Heads of SAARC Statistical Organizations (SAARCSTAT) in New Delhi on 29 August.

India is hosting the three-day meeting and delegates from SAARC Member States and other international organizations viz., FAO, PARIS 21, and ADB attended the Meet. The theme of this Meeting is “Trade Statistics – Merchandise & Services”.

SAARC Members countries will review the implementation of International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) 2010 and Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services (MSITS) 2010.

Reducing Asymmetry in Trade data amongst SAARC countries is one of the topics for discussion in this Meeting. Reducing asymmetry in bilateral trade data is an issue which requires serious attention from the data compilers. Although India has taken up the issues of data reconciliation with a few countries like China, Brazil, Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Sri Lanka but much more needs to be done to bring down the asymmetry to an acceptable level especially in the SAARC Region.