Puntland statistics centre is the hub of statistical data activity in the state which is responsible for collection, processing and dissemination of statistical data through periodic publications. Puntland statistics centre is an attached department of the ministry of planning and international cooperation .The functions of the centre is to carry out data collection, to coordinate and support statistical activities across the Puntland state, to liaise with the Federal Statistical system, to provide advisory services to other statistical agencies and to prepare and disseminate Puntland indicators by collecting information through institutional sources as well as by conducting new censuses/surveys. It’s Head Office at Garoowe and two Regions field offices throughout the Puntland state.
Department of statistics was established in 1998 at the time of Creation of Puntland state of Somalia as a department in Puntland minister of planning and international cooperation. Since that the department mainly produced data for the Government and had limited productions, realizing the shortcomings of the system, the Department Was Transformed and established a Central Statistical Office (CSO) in 2015 as an Attached Department of the Puntland ministry of planning and international cooperation.
Sections of the Statistics Office
The office has the following sections;
- Survey Operations & Quality Control
- Social Statistics
- Economic statistics
- Population, Housing & environmental Statistics
- ICT ,GIS and Data Processing
Objectives of CSO:
- To provide statistical and other information for the purpose of state or national planning and policy requirements.
- To evolve statistical techniques for the analysis of statistical data.
- To collect and publish information which will be of use to those engaged in research activities in the country.
- To endow with and analyse information which are useful to research workers in socioeconomic fields.
Mission of the CSO
The mission of the Puntland Statistical Office will therefore provide a full range of relevant and timely statistics on Population, Social and Economic activities for the National Executive, State agencies, Business and the individuals; thus, to provide the basis for information, decision making, research and discussion within the Community.
Vision of the CSO
The vision of the office will be to produce relevant and accurate statistics that are comparable over time in compliance with the international, national and regional standards.
Overall Mandate
Support the minister in all aspects of statistics policies and standard. Data collection and entries, and safeguarding all the statistical resources and studies.
Key Functions of Centre and Sections
Survey operations and Quality Control section
- To manage the policies for improving the quality of statistics productions, sets and disseminates of statistics products.
- co-ordinates the activities of all divisions of the Directorate
- Coordinate data collection, data entries and data base structures for projects conducted by external Experts
- Ensure statistical standards for statistics in all Puntland Ministries and Agencies
- supervise the Puntland population surveys/census
provide instructions for workers collecting and tabulating data
Social Statistics Section
- produce and advocate of use of demographic and social statistics
- Conducting research and contributing to the development of the centre in the area of population, vital statistics and other social statistics.
- Plan data collection methods for Centre Projects.
- Provide effective leadership and co-ordination of the project and liaise with the line
- Provide technical assistance to the line ministries
Economic statistics Section
- Price collection of essential commodities on weekly basis.
- Co-ordinate the economic statistics with line ministries.
- Production of CPI, GDP, trade, exchange rate and other economic indicators.
- Capacity building of other Government statistics units.
- Collecting information on Puntland needs for aids, and external economic support, and prepare analytical studies in this topic.
ICT section
- Training data entry staff and supervise them
- Allocating questionnaires to data operators and keeping regular backup.
- Set up and maintain databases for the data obtained from the different sections in the Centre.
- Data processing and analysis
- Archiving Questionnaire and other data collection instruments.
- Produce and digitize quality maps for mapping.
- Develop and operate a Puntland statistics database
Population housing and environmental statistics
- Plan and conduct census and household surveys
- Produce periodic reports on population and housing statistics
- Collect data pertaining to statistics environment
- Plans to prepare publish and disseminate the state of the environmental statistics reports.
- Use databases and surveys to obtain further relevant and temporal information on the environment.