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Pernia calls for stronger Asean cooperation in dev’t issues

By Leslie Gatpolintan

August 15, 2019, 2:04 pm

MANILA -- Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia on Thursday called for stronger cooperation and collaboration among member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in addressing economic, environmental, and social issues facing the region.

“We need to move as one and utilize our individual strengths to find innovative and transformative solutions that will identify linkages and address the root cause of each problem that we face,” he said during the 4th Asean Statistical Forum on Thursday, August 15.

Pernia noted the Philippines is facing income inequality, unemployment insecurity, environmental degradation, and increasing disaster risks.

To address these issues, he underscored the importance of Asean Community Statistical System (ACSS), the collectors and generators of data which are used for a deeper analysis of the challenges a member country faces and as a regional community.

“We as a community need to exchange notes on best practices in data collection, management, and reporting. We need to be familiar with technologies that can enable us to produce high-quality and timely statistics,” said Pernia, also Director-General of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

Pernia further said there is also a need to come up with comparable indices for tracking development goals or progress in achieving development goals.

He noted that Asean has been taking great strides to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, from the eradication of poverty, improving maternal health, and to promoting gender equality.

The 2030 Agenda is embodied within the Asean Vision 2025, he added.

Pernia cited the Philippines has started using the multidimensional poverty index.

“This index may be adopted by Asean as a whole. We cannot stress enough the importance of developing statistics in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines–East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) to monitor to what extent development trickles down to the poorest provinces in our respective countries,” he added. (PNA)

 

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