The global advisory committee of the ILO’s initiative on statistics of cooperatives holds its 2nd meeting

Five national researchers made presentations comparing their national contexts with the ILO’s guidelines concerning statistics of cooperatives at the 2nd meeting of the global advisory committee (GAC) of the ILO initiative on implementing the guidelines, held on November 15, 2022.

News | 25 November 2022
The initiative on cooperative statistics is a component of the Strengthening the Social and Solidarity Economy Knowledge Base project, funded by the government of Republic of Korea. It aims to ensure the statistics on cooperatives are reliable, coherent, and internationally comparable, in order to quantify economic and social impact of cooperatives. It is envisioned as a step in implementing the international Guidelines concerning Statistics of Cooperatives that were adopted during the 20th International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 2018. It includes country case studies on Costa Rica, Italy, Republic of Korea, Türkiye, and Tanzania.

The members of the GAC of the initiative include Marie Bouchard (CIRIEC), Hyungsik Eum (ICA), Yonca Gurbuzer (FAO), Sylvain Schtagne (Workers’ group representative) and David Hunter (consultant and former statistician at the ILO). They guide the consultants in assessing if the international guidelines fit the realities in the five countries and make recommendations toward improving the Guidelines.

Ms. Simel Esim, Head of the Cooperatives, Social and Solidarity Economy Unit, welcomed the participants and introduced the ILO’s 346th Governing Body’s approval of the Strategy and Action Plan (SAP) on Decent Work and the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) on November 9th. The seven-year SAP (2023-29) has ‘Improved statistics on decent work and the SSE’ as an output under its first objective that is focused on improved understanding of realities and needs related to decent work and the SSE. Mr. Dong Il Choi, Technical Specialist in the Cooperatives, Social and Solidarity Economy Unit, announced the launch of the information guide on the Guidelines on the ILO website. He presented highlights for the international conference of the initiative that will take place on June 30th in 2023 in Busan, Korea.

The national consultants presented the results of the 2nd national advisory committee (NAC) meeting of each country since the 1st GAC meeting that took place in September 2022. They also presented the strategies of their national case studies including comparisons with the guidelines. GAC members provided initial feedback to the national cases. They shared suggestions on the demarcations around definitions and classification of cooperatives. They also reflected on data quality and data source issues.

The 3rd meeting of the five meetings of the GAC is scheduled to take place on February 14, 2023 following the third NAC meetings of each of the countries. The draft reports of the national case studies will be shared and discussed in the upcoming meeting.