Who We Are

History

The Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (formerly the Asian Statistical Institute) was established in May 1970 as a centre for statistical training in Asia and the Pacific by 20 Governments [Afghanistan, Australia, Ceylon, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Republic of Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, United kingdom (Hong Kong) and Western Samoa], the United Nations and United Nations Development Programme by the initiative of Government of Japan. In April 1995, the Institute was accorded the status of a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) with the establishment of a Governing Council (earlier Board) which reviews the operations and endorses the annual and long-term programmes of work of the Institute. More.....

Positioning Statement

The United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) is a professional statistics training centre for government officials and others working on official statistics. SIAP offers short and long-term specialized trainings to strengthen knowledge and build skills of national governments' employees to produce, use, and share reliable statistics, including for the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals and the development of fact-based policy.

SIAP is a regional training arm of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Mission

To strengthen, through practically oriented training of official statisticians, the capability of the developing members and associate members and economies in transition of the region to collect, analyze and disseminate statistics as well as to produce timely and high quality statistics that can be utilized for economic and social development planning, and to assist those developing members and associate members and economies in transition in establishing or strengthening their statistical training capability and other related activities.

Development Goal

To improve the use of statistics for evidence-based decision-making and to produce and disseminate quality statistics for inclusive, sustainable and resilient societies in the ESCAP region.

Expected Outputs

SIAP is the training arm of the statistics subprogramme of ESCAP, working in partnership with its Statistics Division. Our various training programmes and courses as well as training development activities cover foundations and methods of official statistics, the statistical business process, and specialized domains of social, population, gender, economic, agricultural and rural, and environment statistics. The programmes aim to improve knowledge and skills of official statisticians and government officials in producing, disseminating and using quality statistics and modernizing national statistical institutions.

Programme of Work

Our training programmes and annual course offerings consist of residential courses and short-term courses. The residential courses consist of 6- to 16-weeks JICA-funded group training programmes conducted in Chiba. Short courses range in duration from 2-day to 3-week in-country, sub-regional and regional seminars and training workshops.     
Focus areas of SIAP training are prioritised in accordance with various United Nations mandates, the ESCAP Committee on Statistics and ESCAP strategic directions and determined in consultation with ESCAP member and associate member States and regional and global statistics development partners. The Governing Council reviews and endorses SIAP work plans at its annual sessions.