Statement made by Mr. K.M Mozammel Hoq, Secretary of Statistics and Informatics Division of Bangladesh on behalf of the Group of Least Developed Countries at the 48th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission under agenda item 3(a): Data and indicators for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
UNHQs, New York, 7 March 2017
Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.
At first, I, on behalf of the Group of LDCs and the Bangladesh delegation, would like to congratulate you for being elected as the Chair of the current session of the UNSC. In my first intervention on this first agenda item, I express my sincere thanks to the Inter-agency & Expert Group (IAEG) for developing a list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Indicators.
We align with the statement made by the G77.
Madam Chair,
As the Chair of the LDCs, my delegation would like to make a few points:
Each of the 17 goals of the 2030 agenda and their corresponding targets places the special development challenges and priorities at its front and center. In addition to goal 17, which is dedicated to the Means of Implementation, each of the other 16 goals also contain the specific targets on the Means of Implementation, with a view to ensuring that LDCs, the most vulnerable countries of the world, are not left behind in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, as they were mostly bypassed in the implementation of the MDGs.
The Group is of the view that the indicators should fully and unambiguously capture the goals and targets of the 2030 agenda.
Our careful study of the indicators suggests that there is still room for further honing the list of indicators to ensure that the indicators capture the breadth and depth of the agenda 2030.
It needs to be ensured that the set of indicators fully and comprehensively reflects the ambitions of the new global development agenda. We therefore strongly feel that the list of indicators should remain a living document subject to refinement and revision.
The global review and monitoring should also take into consideration national data and statistics under different indicators.
We also call upon our development partners, in particular the UN system organizations to strengthen the statistical capacity of LDCs as explicitly mandated in the 2030 Agenda.
Madam Chair,
In my national capacity, I would like to mention that my country is gradually moving towards being a middle income country. Hence, statistics has been considering as the only fundamental tool for evidence based policy formulation and planning in order to ensure the optimum use of public resources. Now, in our country, statistical data are being used for effective monitoring and evaluation of the progress towards achieving the ongoing national and international development plan such as Seventh Five Year Plan, which is our own development plan, SDGs and measuring the progress. All these underline the importance of statistics in Bangladesh.
As far as the SDGs are concerned, a high level committee headed by the Hon’ble Prime Minister has been formed to oversee the implementation and monitoring of SDGs. The first task of the Committee was to review the SDGs Mapping. Considering the lesson learned from MDGs, we have initiated some proactive measures such as 1) Settings Priorities for Data Support to 7thFYP and SDGs 2) forming SDGs Cell in Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) 3) SDGs Mapping of Ministries/ Divisions to define the role of each ministry in achieving the SDGs 4) Data Gap Analysis of SDGs to identify the data gaps in monitoring the SDGs and 5) Bangladesh Environmental Statistics Framework (BESF) 2016-2030 to align with SDGs monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
Madam Chair,
My delegation and the Group of LDCs will continue to play a proactive role in the works of the UN Statistical Commission.
Thank You.