Muscat - Under the auspices of H E Sultan bin Salim al Habsi, Secretary-General, Supreme Council for Planning (SCP), the GCC Statistical Centre (GCC-Stat) is organising a five-day workshop in association with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The workshop is aimed at enhancing trainers' knowledge in issues related to cultivating energy statistics and energy balance in the member ESCWA states, said a press release.
Sabir bin Said al Harbi, director general, GCC-Stat, said, "The energy statistics and energy balance workshop comes within the context of a larger scheme that aims to boost the national level of skills related to energy statistics and how to collect data and prepare statistics in the ESCWA member states. The workshop is also a precedent of numerous events and activities planned by GCC-Stat for 2014."
The workshop started on March 9 at the Radisson Blu hotel and will continue till March 13. Attended by statistical experts from regional and international organisations, as well as representatives from statistical centres and the ministries of energy in the GCC and across the Arab world, the workshop covers an intensive series of training modules, detailing best practice data collection and the compilation of statistics according to international standards.
Harbi said, "Energy plays an essential role in our social and economic development. While the oil and gas sector contributes to a major percentage of the total national GDP of the GCC states and our neighbouring Arab countries, there are decrees and policies adopted by those countries to diversify their economy away from a reliance on petro carbons."
He added, "Energy statistics top the list of GCC-Stat's mission and we will soon conduct a survey covering all stat centres in the GCC to examine and evaluate their current status and to identify improvement areas and ways to enhance their function."
© Muscat Daily 2014
