The Philippines recognizes the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for its leadership in implementing the Strategy for the Modernization of Statistics and commends the significant enhancements made to the Statistics and Data Quality Assurance Framework, which has become more comprehensive, inclusive, and adaptable to the evolving data landscape. 

For the Philippines, sampling designs of all agriculture and fisheries surveys were redesigned to increase reliability of data on production and other related statistics, and data collection shifted to Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) from Pen-and-Paper Interview (PAPI) to improve timeliness of release of data. Following guidelines of the World Programme for the Census of Agriculture, the 2022 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries (CAF) was conducted in 2023 to generate updated structural data and fresh sampling frames for agriculture and fisheries surveys. This was done through a hybrid method which consisted of traditional data collection method and the use of Earth Observation (EO) data. 

The Philippines also commends FAO’s initiatives aimed at building statistical capacity at national and regional level. The Philippines has benefitted from FAO’s capacity development interventions with the successful completion of the project on “Strengthening of Agricultural Statistics Through the Review and Assessment of the Agricultural Indicators System (AIS) and Supply Utilization Accounts (SUA) and Food Balance Sheet (FBS)”.

We look forward to the completion of the FAODATA Explorer and reaffirm our commitment to supporting FAO through continuous data provision.

The Philippines also fully supports the work program of the UN Committee of Experts on Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Statistics on the improvement of methods in measuring food security and consumption, and the use of EO data for agriculture statistics. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair.