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The Statistics Advisory Board held a meeting today (June 24) to review the main scope of government statistical work and its recent developments.
At the meeting, Members were briefed on the methodology of the Annual Earnings and Hours Survey (AEHS) which is a new survey to collect detailed wage, employment and demographic data of employees to facilitate analysis related to the Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW), and the mechanism for ensuring adherence to international standards in statistical work.
"Fieldwork for the 2009 round of AEHS is being conducted during May to September 2009. The first set of the survey results will be available by end 2009. The Provisional Minimum Wage Commission and the Government will analyse the survey results in conjunction with a host of other factors such as unemployment rate, inflation, economic growth and competitiveness in determining the level of SMW," said Mr Fung Hing-wang, the Commissioner for Census and Statistics and the Chairman of the Statistics Advisory Board.
Members were updated on the major enhancements of the Programme of Annual Economic Surveys, the main data source for compiling sectoral business operating characteristics statistics. Relevant initiatives include integrating the component annual economic surveys of different economic sectors into a unified survey to achieve harmonisation of survey processes, and enriching the economic datasets for new and emerging economic activities such as information and communications services, environment-related activities, personal services (like education and health-care services) as well as enhancing business statistics for small and medium enterprises in Hong Kong. These developments would improve the usefulness and relevance of economic statistics to meet users' changing data needs, and enhance the effectiveness of the economic data collection system.
Members noted that the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) attached great importance to the quality of its statistical systems in compliance with the international standards. They discussed the existing mechanism and practices of quality assurance of statistical work in C&SD and recognised that the quality assurance mechanism in C&SD was rated high by international standards. They supported the recent enhancements to the mechanism, including the updating of rules for validating survey data and the strengthening of the data verification processes.
"We have made reference to international quality guidelines in developing our quality assurance mechanism. Specifically, C&SD is a forerunner to subscribe to the Special Data Dissemination Standard of the International Monetary Fund, which contains a set of international standards on the quality of disseminated statistical data and the best practices in disseminating statistics. While our quality assurance mechanism operates smoothly at present, a number of enhancement measures are being instituted with a view to further strengthening the mechanism," Mr Fung said.
Also reported at the meeting were a review completed by C&SD to examine the need of having an updated set of population projections after the release of the 2006-based population projections in July 2007; and enhancement of statistical services for monitoring the supply and price movements of essential food items.
The Board also reviewed other statistical developments, including preparation for the 2011 Population Census and 2009/10 Household Expenditure Survey; the latest developments regarding the compilation of labour statistics; and promotion of statistical literacy by C&SD among different sectors of the community.
The Statistics Advisory Board is a non-statutory advisory body which advises the Commissioner for Census and Statistics on matters pertaining to government statistical work. Members include representatives of business sector, the academia and the community. The terms of reference and composition of the Board can be found on the C&SD Website (www.censtatd.gov.hk/about_us/our_advisory_board/index.jsp).
Ends/Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Issued at HKT 16:36
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