The fourth Ethiopian Secretariat and Technical Working Group (TWG) workshop on CountrySTAT was held from 24 to 26 July 2013, in Addis Ababa. This workshop was jointly organized by the Central Statistical Agency (CSA) and FAO.

The technical working sessions included people from the Central Statistics Agency (CSA) and Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA) who are involved in the system of national food and agriculture statistics, including data from other related sectors. The number of professionals initially planned to participate in the TWG workshop was thirteen. But one member from the ERCA was not able to join the Secretariat and TWG in the workshop as he was out of the city on an urgent assignment. As a result, twelve professionals drawn from the CSA and ERCA participated in the collection and validation of datasets to be uploaded to CountrySTAT Ethiopia website. Annex 2 contains the list of professionals who participated in the workshop.

As in the case of the earlier three TWG meetings, the purpose of this workshop has been to bring together the CountrySTAT Secretariat and technical working group members in order to collect and harmonize missing time series data to be uploaded to CountrySTAT Ethiopia website. The harmonization of data also includes the assessment and resolution of discrepancies and inconsistencies in the existing datasets at the National and Sub-national levels as well as checking the contents of the FAO Questionnaire against the data sets published on CountrySTAT and fixing irregularities.

Specific objectives:

• to collect and validate data for missing indicators in the Standard Core and Sub-National domain;
• to collect and validate data on area harvested, production, and land use from the 2012 Main Season Agricultural Survey at the Core and Sub-national levels;
• to collect and validate the “Belg Season” Agricultural data; 
• to collect and validate data from the 2001 Agricultural Census; 
• to collect and validate data from Agricultural Statistics Abstract; 
• to collect and validate data on number of Live Animals; 
• to collect and validate data on Slaughtered Animals; 
• to collect and validate Producers’ Price Data for 2012 at the Core and Sub-national level; collect and validate Producer Price Index(PPI) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) for 2012 at the Core level; 
• to collect and validate Trade Data (Import & Export) at the National level;
• to analyze and resolve discrepancies and inconsistencies in the data at the Core and respective Sub-national levels; 
• to validate and update data tables in accordance to the international standards; 
• to update the Correspondence Table to get complete national list on agricultural products;
• to prepare and insert Metadata for the newly collected and validated data sets;
• to upload additional data to the CountrySTAT website.

During the three days workshop the technical working group organized and validated about 23 different datasets. The datasets which were collected and validated during the fourth TWG meeting, as well as other datasets that need further assessment and validation.

The verification of the datasets involved the collection and validation of data for the missing indicators at the National and Sub-National levels, resolving some of the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the data, and the collection and partial validation of the quantity and value of trade datasets related to the import and export of Live Animals and Machinery. The partial validation is due to the fact that the value of import/export of items is given in local currency and that needs to be converted to hard currency (USD) before the data can be uploaded. For the conversion, annual average exchange rate is required and the TWG members who have been working on the validation of the Trade Data are now trying to get it from the national bank. The data will then be uploaded as soon as the average exchange rate is obtained and the data is updated accordingly.