International Workshop

In 2003 the Office of Agricultural Economics (OAE) established the Agricultural Statistics and Economic Analysis Development (ASEAD) Project in cooperation with JICA. Its objectives are to strengthen the efficiency and capacity of OAE with respect to agricultural statistics, information and economic analysis to enable OAE to play the central rules in developing for agricultural statistics and information in Thailand and in ASEAN region. Main activities of ASEAD are (1) development of human resources of OAE for Information Network System and agricultural economic analysis, mainly demand-supply forecasting, for ASEAN member countries (2) Improvement of data collection methodology (3) Establishment of Information Network System (4) Development of agricultural economic analysis methodology (5) Development of training capacity of OAE staff.

Further more, the ASEAD is to support the OAE for developing and conducting the agricultural economic analysis, which covers Agricultural Input-Output Analysis, Agricultural Macro-Economic Analysis, and Agricultural Commodity Supply-Demand Analysis. These economic tools must be useful to analyze and forecast the future of food demands and supply and the effects to or impacts on the farmers.

ASEAN Food Security Information System (AFSIS) Project plays a role of collection of information and statistical data and of analyzing food supply-demand situation, and to disseminate the results to the ASEAN member countries. For this purpose, it is essential to collect the information of food crop planting and yielding and the import data of foods and food crops on supply side. On the other hand, it is also quite important to gather the information of the trend and pattern of food consumption, and the foods and food statistical crop export data on the side of demand. Since Thailand has been designated as the project manager of AFSIS by ASEAN member countries, ASEAD will support the AFSIS activities indirectly to strengthen the data collection and statistical analysis.

ASEAD and OAE will jointly organize International Workshop on Agricultural Economic Analysis for disseminating and exchanging various aspects on information and technical methods, the concept of input-output table, and methods of analyses for agricultural economic policy making, including the food security information system in ASEAN. This workshop will focus on the practical uses of Input-Output Table for agricultural sectors and the linkage between agricultural sectors and the related sectors. This workshop will also aim to contribute statistical improvement and economic analysis to maintain the food security information system, and the human resource development in ASEAN region.