The world is continuously battling against the challenges brought about by changes in the economy, society and even in the environment. The commitment of countries all over the world to address problems such as extreme poverty and hunger, and other forms of human deprivation paved way for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targeted to be achieved by 2015. The MDGs are a set of time-bound and quantified goals and targets to combat poverty, hunger, diseases, illiteracy, environmental degradation and gender inequality. Towards the end of MDG monitoring in 2015, the Member States of the United Nations (UN) agreed to further monitor the development goals through the post-2015 development agenda or the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

 

In September 2015, the Member States adopted a new sustainable development agenda comprising of goals to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. In its 47th Session on 8-11 March 2016, the UN Statistical Commission agreed on the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda which defined the 17 goals, 169 targets, and 230 indicators.

 

In line with this, collaborative efforts of the Philippine Statistical System (PSS) agencies, the academe, private sector, and civil society organizations (CSOs) are being synchronized towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change, to name a few. A major first step taken by the PSS in support of efforts to attain the SDGs is the issuance of PSA Resolution No. 4 s.2016, “Enjoining Government Agencies to Adopt and Provide Data Support to the Sustainable Development Goals.”

 

The theme ,“Sustainable Development: Making Statistics Count ”,for the 27th National Statistics Month (NSM) and the 13 th National Convention on Statistics (NCS) highlights the critical role of statistics in monitoring the country ’s progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the Philippines pledges to make the 2030 Agenda a reality and to leave no Filipino behind, the PSS strategic actions shall be more focused towards generating more timely and reliable statistics through maximizing use of quality administrative and other sources of data; use of information technology in data collection, dissemination and preservation; developing robust methodologies in addressing data gaps, and producing data with various disaggregation variables and lower level disaggregation, among others.