The 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLC) through its resolution in 2013, urged states to improve statistcs on co-operative enterprises and enhance the scope of formulation and implementation of national development policies. The recognition of co-operatives as partners in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the need to further the process for development of international guidelines on co-operative statistics & methodologies for collection of data brought together a variety of stakeholders working on data collection and analysis of co-operative enterprises worldwide, in April in Rome, Italy.
This multi-stakeholder workshop on statistics of co-operatives was organised at the FAO building in Rome, Italy on 5-6 April 2016 by the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Co-operatives or COPAC, of which ICA is the current chair. Mr. Charles Gould, Director General, ICA assumed the role of the chairperson for the two day workshop. He informed the group about various existing international initiatives on coop statistics in the form of the World Co-operative Monitor, Survey of Co-operative Capital, the Global Census of Cooperatives by the UNDESA and the CICOPA global report on cooperatives and employment. He added that the ILO’s Department of Statistics and the Cooperative Unit have jointly undertaken a global mapping initiative on the availability of cooperatives statistics consisting of an inventory of 69 countries on sources, providers/producers and variables related to employment and economic issues. Other workshop participants included Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Canada; University of Valencia, Spain and Centro StudiLegacoop, Italy, representing the academia and the Turkish Ministry of Customs and Trade, Vietnamese General Statistics Office, Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency and the Counsellor of the Iranian Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare at the ILO, Geneva representing their respective governments. The main objective of the workshop was to present the findings from the global mapping exercises and select case studies facilitate by the ILO and FAO and gather feedback and inputs from workshop participants. The workshop was divided in two main sessions namely ‘Setting the Scene’ that saw various agencies present their findings and case studies and secondly, ‘Developing a Roadmap’ that began with a brainstorming session on identifying parameters for collection of data such as ‘definition’ of cooperatives, ‘classification’ schemes to be used in collection of data and ‘challenges’ in undertaking the coop statistics exercise in order to contribute to developing harmonized guidelines on coop-statistics and propose the same at the 2018 ICLC.
This multi-stakeholder workshop on statistics of co-operatives was organised at the FAO building in Rome, Italy on 5-6 April 2016 by the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Co-operatives or COPAC, of which ICA is the current chair. Mr. Charles Gould, Director General, ICA assumed the role of the chairperson for the two day workshop. He informed the group about various existing international initiatives on coop statistics in the form of the World Co-operative Monitor, Survey of Co-operative Capital, the Global Census of Cooperatives by the UNDESA and the CICOPA global report on cooperatives and employment. He added that the ILO’s Department of Statistics and the Cooperative Unit have jointly undertaken a global mapping initiative on the availability of cooperatives statistics consisting of an inventory of 69 countries on sources, providers/producers and variables related to employment and economic issues. Other workshop participants included Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Canada; University of Valencia, Spain and Centro StudiLegacoop, Italy, representing the academia and the Turkish Ministry of Customs and Trade, Vietnamese General Statistics Office, Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency and the Counsellor of the Iranian Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare at the ILO, Geneva representing their respective governments. The main objective of the workshop was to present the findings from the global mapping exercises and select case studies facilitate by the ILO and FAO and gather feedback and inputs from workshop participants. The workshop was divided in two main sessions namely ‘Setting the Scene’ that saw various agencies present their findings and case studies and secondly, ‘Developing a Roadmap’ that began with a brainstorming session on identifying parameters for collection of data such as ‘definition’ of cooperatives, ‘classification’ schemes to be used in collection of data and ‘challenges’ in undertaking the coop statistics exercise in order to contribute to developing harmonized guidelines on coop-statistics and propose the same at the 2018 ICLC.
