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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE FIRST
REGULAR MEETING OF THE REGIONAL STATISTICAL COORDINATION COMMITTEE (RSCC)
XII HELD ON APRIL 19, 2007 AT THE D&M CATERING SERVICES, COTABATO CITY The meeting started with an invocation followed by the singing of the national anthem. It was presided by the RSCC XII Chair, NEDA XII Regional Director, Hadja Sittie Mariam (Ma. Lourdes) D. Lim. In her opening message, the Chair welcomed the participants and made a run through of the proposed agenda items for the day. The Chair also informed the body that NEDA XII has a new regular representative to the RSCC in the person of Ms. Mae Ester Guiamadel, the Chief of the newly reorganized Knowledge Management Division (KMD) of NEDA XII as statistical concerns are now lodged at the KMD. The reorganization of NEDA into functional divisions is in line with the government’s efforts to improve governance and institutional reforms/development. The
Chair remarked that being the first meeting of the RSCC XII for 2007, the
body would like to know how it has performed in the previous year as well as
evaluate the performance of local statistical coordination committees (PrSCCs/CSCCs)
in terms of coordination and statistical development in their respective
areas. Apart from what were accomplished in 2006, the Committee would also
discuss activities lined up for 2007. The Chair enjoined each one’s active
participation to generate substantial inputs for the Committee’s
decisions/agreements on various concerns. The
provisional agenda and the minutes of the previous meeting were
approved/confirmed without revision. The
following were updates on various matters arising from the previous meeting. The Secretariat informed the Committee that as an effort to advocate the importance of the PPA and to steer the interest and appreciation of the LGUs on the importance of the PPA, the RD has presented the PPA proposal to Sarangani Province and Sultan Kudarat during their PrSCC meetings in 2006. The City Government of General Santos, on the other hand, has earlier expressed its interest on the development and compilation of the local product accounts. The
Secretariat also provided the Province of Sarangani and General Santos City
of pro-forma Memorandum of Agreement to provide these interested LGUs of an
overview of the PPA activity in terms of the benefits, cost, data
requirements and work responsibilities of the concerned parties. The
Secretariat was tasked to study a training design that would provide
regional/local participants with enough background to prepare them for the
training proper on small-area estimation. The
Chair commended Sarangani for its statistical development initiatives and
requested that the Secretariat be provided with a copy of the MOA . She
instructed the Secretariat to furnish other LGUs of the MOA for their
advance reference in preparation for their own initiatives once they embark
on the barangay agricultural profiling survey. HGCaraan presented the salient points of the approved 2005-2010 PSDP for information and support of the RSCC. In effect, the Chair advised the Secretariat to prepare a statistical framework for the region. A technical workshop was agreed to be conducted last week of April which would involve the critical participation of regional line agencies and the LGUs. The Chair also requested the Secretariat that the RSCC be regularly updated of the status of the regional activities included in the 2005-2010 PSDP. HGCaraan responded that this will be done as monitoring is a critical component of the PSDP. The members were given e-copies of the PSDP. The 2007 planning thrusts for statistical activities was also presented. The Chair advised the members to take note of the 2007 statistical thrusts as they are imbedded in the 2005-2010 PSDP. The
2007 Policy Agenda was also approved by the Committee as they are aligned in
the 2007 statistical thrusts and 2005–2010 PSDP. The RSCC and LSCCs accomplishments were presented. The Chair commended everyone for their contribution in the successful implementation of RSCC/PrSCC/CSCC activities in 2006. On the RSCC Work Program for 2007, the Chair suggested that the SAE modular training be conducted in the Second Quarter of 2007 instead of in October. She also requested the Secretariat to circulate the draft training design during the workshop scheduled by end of April 2007. She also positively noted the inclusion of the technical workshop on the formulation of the statistical development framework for Region XII as presented by Ma. Eileen A. Berdeprado. For the number of resolutions targeted every quarterly meeting, the Chair said that about three resolutions could be targeted. For the 2007 Work Programs of the PrSCCs/CSSCs/LGUs, the Chair advised the LGUs to enhance their work programs based on the 2005-2010 PSDP as well as on the presented 2007 statistical thrusts. The
revised work programs of the PrsCCs/CsCC/LGUs are expected to be received by
the Secretariat not later than end of April. The Chair commended the RTWG on GID indicators for the development of an integrative set of indicators that could be used to measure the performance of the region on good governance and institutions development as articulated in Chapter 5 of the region’s MTRDP 2004-2010. The
Chair said that this regional initiative is said to be the first among the
regions in the country. The Chair expressed satisfaction on the outputs of
the RTWG. Ms. Phlorita Ridao, the Chief of NEDA XII’s Planning and Policy
Formulation Division, said that the said effort was actually an
operationalization of Dr. Virola’s paper on good governance which he
presented in the 9th National Convention on Statistics in 2004. Ms. Phlorita Ridao informed the Committee that the Core Group on MDG Progress Report Preparation had a workshop last March 6, 2007 to improve and finalize the draft document based on the comments and suggestions of the NEDA Central Office. The said report is expected to come out in April 2007. Ms.
Ridao thanked the RSCC, NSCB RD XII and other partner agencies for the
invaluable assistance in the completion and finalization of the report. In response to a letter/directive of the RDC XII requesting the RSCC XII to review the agriculture and fishery data contained in the 2006 3rd Quarter QRES, the Secretariat requested some clarifications from the BAS being the official source of data on agriculture and fishery. RASO Pacate of BAS XII, in a letter of response, explained clearly the procedures on how BAS validates the data before they are being released to the public. He added that representatives from the BAS and BFAR are involved during the validation process to ensure the accuracy of the data on agriculture and fishery. The
Chair remarked that BAS XII has clearly defended its estimates. Mr. Edward Eloja updated the Committee members of the on-going preparations for the 10th National Convention on Statistics (NCS). He informed the RSCC that there were 37 abstracts/papers from Mindanao of which, 8 were submissions from Region 10; 25 from Region XI and 4 from Region XII. For the 4th Mindanao Statistics Congress, Mr. Jerome Babate of CPDO GenSan informed the Committee that General Santos City will serve as host of the 4th Mindanao Statistics Congress which will be held on June 21-23, 2007 at the Family Country Hotel in General Santos City in conjunction with the Yaman Gensan Trade Fair. The lead organizer of the 4th Mindanao Statistics Congress is the PSA SOCCSKSARGEN Chapter. For
both statistical events, the Chair enjoined the active support of all
members either as paper writers or participants. The RSCC XII passed a
resolution enjoining active participation of all regional line agencies and
local government units for the 4th Mindanao Statistics Congress. The Chair
reiterated the meritorious objectives of holding these important events. Mr.
Ismael Ramos, Jr. of NSO XII informed the Committee that the 2007 Census
will be conducted by the NSO this coming August. The Chair requested the NSO
to provide them with pertinent documents relative to the responsibility of
the NEDA Regional Director as Head of the Regional Census Coordinating Board
(RCCB). Mr. Ramos promised to do so as soon as official documents relative
to the 2007 POPCEN are ready for dissemination Mr. Edward Eloja informed the RSCC of the latest resolutions issued by the NSCB Executive Board for information and adoption of all concerned. He also announced the list of statistical trainings to be conducted by the SRTC for the year 2007. He
also informed the body of the latest products and services available at the
NSCB RD/NSIC XII Office. With
no other matters to discuss, the meeting was adjourned at past 4:00 in the
afternoon of the same day. |