(Item 12 of the Agenda)
125. In response to issues about image scanning technologies raised during the 19th Session the papers APCAS/04/17, "Processing of 2002 Census of Agriculture Questionnaires: A New Technology of the Philippines", and APCAS/04/INF9, "Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations - Egypt OICR Workshop" were provided to the Commission. The Commission noted that the United Nations Statistical Division had supported this technology in various countries and that the Workshop in Cairo had recommended OICR as a means to 1) Reduce manual data entry, 2) Shorten processing time, 3) Save cost, 4) Improve data quality, 5) Enhance questionnaire archive and 6) Increase efficiency of census management.
126. In the information paper, APCAS/04/INF8, "Associating Agricultural Holdings with Agricultural Enterprises: Some Issues", prepared at the request of the 19th Session, guidelines for differentiation of farm households from agricultural establishments and implications of the use of agricultural enterprises and establishments on the design and sampling frames for agricultural censuses and surveys were presented.
127. During the presentation of Document APCAS/04/INF11, "Provisional Plan for the 2005 Agriculture Census in Republic of Korea", the Commission was advised that the Republic of Korea would undertake an agriculture census in 2005 and that: (1) the census would cover each Enumeration District (ED) of the 2005 population and housing census where the ED contained an average of 120 farm households; (2) a 2 percent sample EDs would be selected in the post enumeration survey; (3) the major items covered in the census would be farm households, farm household members, agriculture land and crops, livestock and poultry, agricultural machinery and turnover of agriculture and livestock products; and, (4) primary issues were to reduce the data processing time and to maintain the consistency of the serial data of annual sample surveys in relation to census data.
128. The Commission learned through Document APCAS/04/18, "Agricultural Statistics in Nepal", that Nepal had conducted five decennial censuses on agriculture with the Census of Agriculture 2001 the last in the series, and had been conducting the Crops and Livestock Survey (CLS) since 1998. The Commission was further informed that one of the main aims of this CLS was to estimate area under crops, production of crops, livestock and poultry inventory and their products twice a year and that it was also expected to prepare forecasts of crop production for the estimation of quarterly national accounts and to provide timely estimates of agriculture sector variables for planning and policy formulation and for research and decision-making.
129. The Commission was informed that in the case of Nepal, the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives collected similar data series on crop area and production, livestock inventory and products, but that the results led to conflicting statistics on crop and livestock. The Commission learned that because of operational difficulties arising from the prevailing security situation in the sample areas, unreliable results were often obtained.
