The Minister of Agriculture Levan Davitashvili, the Deputy Minister of Environment and Natural Resources protection Ekaterine Grigalava and the Executive Director of the National Statistics Office Meri Daushvili joined a high-level donor consultation meeting held with support of the FAO Reprersentation in Georgia.

During the meeting, FAO has presented an outline of the technical assistance required to support the implementation of a Strategic Plan for Agricultural, Environmental and Rural Statistics (SPAERS) in Georgia.

Building on the SPAERS document, which was endorsed by implementing agencies in early 2016, FAO is calling its partners to join the forces to support the implementation of the SPAERS Plan of Action for Georgia from 2018 to 2020, and has identified the financial and technical support that will be needed to strengthen the institutional capacities of the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Environment and GeoStat and to improve the skills and competencies of the three implementing agencies in reliable data production.

In his opening address, the Minister of Agriculture stressed the significance of the reliable statistics in Georgia. - ``Successful implementation of SPAERS’ Plan of Action for the coming biennium with support of FAO is crucial for us because of the several aspects: first – high-quality and reliable statistics are the basic pillar of successful policies, and strengthening the capacities of the Ministry of Agriculture in this direction will lead to a better evidence based decision-making. Our ministry implements the Strategy of Agricultural Development and the Strategy of Rural Development, we also have requirements from the EU to meet their standards according to the Association Agreement as well the obligations to monitor and report on progress towards Sustainable Development Goals. Implementation of all these strategic documents requires an objective and reliable statistical information, `` Levan Davitashvili  said.

SPAERS was prepared by the Georgian Government, with technical support from FAO in 2015. The document was approved by three main state agencies involved: The National Statistical Office of Georgia (Geostat), the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection. The overall aim of the project is to build the system of statistics which will be trusted locally and internationally and generate quality and reliable statistical data.

``SPAERS-Georgia is the successful product of FAO’s initiative to develop the global strategy for agricultural, rural and environmental statistics in response to the declining quantity and quality of the reliable data,” - said Mamuka Meskhi, Assistant FAO Representative in Georgia.  “This area is becoming even more important in view of the Agenda 2030 and the need to supporting the Georgian Government in monitoring and reporting on the progress towards SDGs: there are more than 30 indicators that require specific agricultural, environmental and rural data. FAO is happy to facilitate the dialogue and collaboration among the state institutions in the area of statistics, mobilize the external support for the new initiative and provide adequate technical expertise for implementation of the proposed assistance, `` he added. .

Representatives of the embassies and international development partners attended the event. The closing part of the meeting was devoted to the discussion and feedback from the attending parties about the draft outline of the proposed technical assistance. It was agreed to apply a phased approach to the proposed assistance and plan the actions to be undertaken already this year in order to get ready for a possible launch of the assistance from 2018.