The Executive Director of GEOSTAT was elected as a Chair of the Bureau of the ESCAP Committee on Statistics

Date: 26 August 2020

On August 26, 2020, Mr. Gogita Todradze, the Executive Director of the National Statistics Office of Georgia (GEOSTAT) has been elected as a Chair of the Bureau of the ESCAP Committee on Statistics for a two-year term at the 7th Session of the Bureau of Statistics of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).

The 7th session of the ESCAP Committee on Statistics opened on August 26 and will continue during the current week.
The election of the Chair and new members of the Statistics Committee Bureau was held on the very first day of the session, which was attended by the heads of the Statistical Offices of more than 50 ESCAP member countries and high-ranking representatives of various international organizations (UNSD, UNDP, UNICEF, UN WOMAN, FAO, IOM).

For the first time in the history of Georgian statistics, the representative of Georgia became the Chair of the Bureau of the ESCAP Committee on Statistics, which is a great opportunity for the country in terms of further development and improvement of official statistics.

After being elected as the Chair of the Bureau of the Committee on Statistics, Mr. Gogita Todradze thanked all the participants for the confidence expressed and underlined the importance of cooperation between Georgia and UNESCAP - "It is a great honor for me to express my sincere gratitude to the delegates of today's session. I am pleased and proud of having the opportunity to address you as the newly elected Chair of the Committee on Statistics. I would like to assure you that Georgia, as a member of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), is your reliable partner, which continues to support the ESCAP Committee on Statistics in achieving its goals.

There is important work ahead of us. The members of the Bureau and I will do our best to ensure that the Committee on Statistics achieves its goals and reaches success by adhering to internationally recognized professional ethics and principles”.

The Bureau is an advisory and coordinating body of the Committee on Statistics, which assists it in performing of its functions. The renewed Bureau consists of 6 members, which together with Georgia, brings together the heads of the Statistical Services of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Fiji.

As for the ESCAP Committee on Statistics, it represents the highest-level of intergovernmental format and the main decision-making body on statistics in the Asia-Pacific region.

Within the framework of the session, Mr. Gogita Todradze, as the newly elected chair, participated in a high-level panel discussion, where he pointed out the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the role of modern technologies in the production of official statistics, the importance of alternative data, the challenges facing the statistics system and its main directions.

The bureau of the previous convocation has been led by the head of the Statistics Office of Malaysia, since 2018, which together with Georgia united the heads of the Statistical Services of China, Iran, Myanmar and Samoa.