The State of Agricultural Statistics in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Southeast Asia (SEA) means different places to different people. The broadest definition will include Burma, Viet Nam, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia. These countries, home to 420 million people, are a study in diversity. Among their major differences are government (republican, parliamentary, socialist, marxist), religion (Buddhist, Christian, Moslem, Atheist), colonial background (American, British, Dutch, French, none), geography (landlocked, coastal, archipelagic) and size (e.g. from 3 million to 176 million population) . The statistical systems vary also. Indonesia and Malaysia have highly centralized systems wherein a central bureau or department of statistics exercises strong control and coordination of statistical activities, with subject matter ministries like agriculture involved only in field data collection. The Philippines and Thailand have highly decentralized systems in which a national statistical office takes care of most of the non-agricultural statistics, while a bureau in the agriculture ministry does the agricultural statistics almost independently; the system is held together by a coordinating agency existing either autonomously or in the planning ministry. Then there are the Centrally Planned Economies with their closely integrated political and statistical apparatuses and grassroots approach to basic data collection, especially of agricultural data.