The second OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy” began yesterday in İstanbul with the participation of more than 1,200 experts from over 110 countries representing governments, academia, business, civil society, the arts and the media. The forum is aiming to improve the development and dissemination of social, economic and environmental indicators. Under the spotlight too will be how statistics are used and misused.Organized in cooperation with the European Commission, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the UN, the World Bank and in partnership with the Turkish government’s State Planning Organization (DPT), the sessions are covering a wide range of themes: From migration to urban development, from climate change to innovation and from culture to happiness.
Approximately 200 speakers will discuss these issues for two consecutive days. Some prominent figures scheduled to appear are European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Joaquín Almunia, World Bank Chief Economist François Bourguignon, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Margaret Chan, UN Development Program (UNDP) head Kemal Derviş and IBM Vice President Nick Donofrio. There are also some eye-catching speakers of note, including Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Iceland’s President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and UN Undersecretary-General José Antonio Ocampo.
The forum opened with a speech by Prime Minister Erdoğan. The main point Erdoğan stressed throughout his speech was the existence of a correlation between reliable statistics and the strength of democracy in a country. “Statistics don’t only define and measure economic wealth,” Erdoğan asserted, and went on to say that a consideration of the major factors affecting social development is also needed.
“Statistics institutions have to conduct research and studies to be able to produce many indicators: such as the efficiency of women in the political and administrative mechanisms; the penetration and accessibility of the education system; the structure of wealth distribution; the prevalence of the democratic institutions; the spirit of entrepreneurship and the innovation capacity,” Erdoğan said. Only by doing so, he stipulated, can the current policy applications be discussed on a healthy basis and thus new policy proposals can be offered. He concluded by saying: “In the institutionalization of democracy, there is an undeniable role of reliable statistics. For the production of comprehensive and understandable data, political support is a must, too.”
State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdüllatif Şener claimed in his speech, at the opening session of the forum in the morning, that globalization was undoubtedly the most important phenomenon of the last 30 years. He said the globalization process had caused radical changes in the patterns of production and commercial activities all around the world.
“Financial inequality, unfair distribution of wealth, poverty and environmental and security threats against human existence are looming large as the most fundamental problems facing humanity in the modern world,” he said. He stated that globalization had started in the financial markets at the end of the 1970s, but now, he said, “it pervaded every segment of daily life thanks to the development of telecommunications and transportation at a rattling velocity.”
OECD Secretary-General Gurría also had a few words to say on globalization. He proclaimed that this phenomenon would become an instrument to lead societies, and the world in general, to better standards, as well as increasing global wealth. He recalled that Russia, Chile, Israel, Slovenia and Estonia had recently become members of the OECD and some countries from the emerging third world -- such as Indonesia, India and China -- had already begun their own process of rapid development.
“If [the project] succeeds in reaching its targets, the results will have permanent effects on the continuation of our societies,” Gurría said, claiming that the OECD World Forum had “initiated the most difficult, challenging and the most perfect project ever.”
Noting that there were a many participants attending the event, Gurría expressed his wonder about the extensive participation: “I am not sure whether you have attended the forum because it is so exciting, or because it is being held in İstanbul.”
Public policies were “extremely important,” Gurria said, claiming that it was necessary to devise instruments to strengthen the national policy structure. “The better the national policy structure is, the better the international coordination is provided,” he said. If states could achieve well-structured public policies, the “creation of a between social structure will be easier and it will lead to the improvement of the statistical capacities of countries,” he asserted.
Undersecretary for the DPT Ahmet Tıktık also took the stage and spared a large portion of his speech to talk about the middle-term prospects of the Turkish economy. “The period between 2007 and 2013 will be an era of sustainable growth in stability, reaching global competitiveness, transforming into an information society and completing the adaptation to the European Union’s values,” he noted. Issuing a note of caution, he added, “However, public and private entities, as well as mere individuals, have to do their best hand-in-hand along the way to [integrate with] the developed nations.”
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