The Third Meeting of the MEDSTAT IV Working Group on Statistical Business Registers (SBR) was organised by Eurostat in collaboration with Expertise Française in Istanbul, Turkey on 26-28 July 2016. 17 official statisticians and experts from Algeria, Egypt, France, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey participated in the Working Group Meeting. Dr. Atilla Karaman, Researcher at the Statistics and Information Department, represented SESRIC at the Meeting.

The brief introduction by co-chairs; i.e., Mr. Saleh Alkafri, Director General of Department of Economics Statistics, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), and Ms. Rosemary Montgomery, Senior Statistician and Team Leader for Cooperation with ENP Countries, Eurostat, concentrated on the MEDSTAT IV project, how the Working Group functions, orientations for sector activities, work programme of the business statistics and statistical business registers working group, and outcomes of the last Euro-Mediterranean Statisticians Forum that took place in Prague, Czech Republic on April 2016.

Following the introduction, Dr. Atilla Karaman delivered a presentation on the Statistical Capacity Building Programme (StatCaB) of SESRIC with a focus on the regional and international cooperation linkages with relevant stakeholders to contribute to the efforts of OIC member countries in improving their statistical capacities.

The Third Meeting of the MEDSTAT IV Working Group on SBRs went on with the sessions on updates from the project scope countries, country experiences on SBRs, and discussions on technical assistance programmes to implement SBRs.

The second day of the Working Group Meeting was allocated to Business Statistics which then was followed by the Joint Workshop on Updating Registers and Economic Surveys on the third day.

MEDSTAT IV project covers a 40-month-period from 2016 to 2019 with an allocated budget of 4.7 million Euro with a focus on 9 countries in the ENP-South region. For MEDSTAT IV, the thematic sectors that are covered include business registers and business statistics; energy; labour market; migration; trade; and transport. The overarching theme for MEDSTAT IV is quality of statistics.

For more information, please visit: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/european-neighbourhood-policy/enp-south

Documents:

• Draft Agenda of the Third Meeting of the MEDSTAT IV Working Group on Statistical Business Registers (SBRs) and Joint Workshop on Updating Registers and Economic Surveys (English)