The Ministry of Agriculture has placed improving statistics in agriculture as a high priority requirement for policy making and reviewing development programmes.

The Ministry is currently undergoing a three day workshop on Senior Management Advocacy on Agriculture Statistics to further enhance the understanding on it at the Outrigger Fiji Beach Resort in Korotogo yesterday.

It was opened by the Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management, Inia Seruiratu.

He said improving the agriculture statistics was part of the international efforts to improve quality of agriculture information used in decision making.

“Towards the end of the 2015 the Ministry of Agriculture with the assistance of food and agriculture released an in-depth country assessment report,” Mr Seruiratu said.

He said this report brought out the existing agricultural statistics system, identified data gaps, weaknesses, technical assistance and training interventions needed to improve agriculture.

Mr Seruiratu said as part of the capacity building process, the workshop objectives were to ensure interaction with the agriculture data users by understanding their needs and adopting a suitable methodology.

He said the workshop would look at improving current data collection and hoped the seniors at the Ministry would have the capability of producing quality agriculture statistics.

More than 30 stakeholders and agriculture statistics users will be presenting on data collection during the three days.

A presenter from Fiji Bureau of Statistics, Vimlesh Krishna said, according to their statistics, the contribution from agriculture sector in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had dropped for a while.

But Mr Krishna said the value of agriculture had increased.

Edited by: Farzana Nisha

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