United Nations (UN) secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, along with the leaders of six multilateral financial institutions, has announced the organisation’s intention to strengthen interagency sharing and collaboration on issues related to data and statistical capacity building.

Leaders of the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Islamic Development Bank, the UN, and World Bank Group (WBG) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on strengthening statistical capacity in member countries and to facilitate the sharing of data, tools, standards and analysis to improve statistics for monitoring development outcomes.

The goals of the MoU would be further supported by the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The collaboration would provide the global community with improved statistical tools with which to measure progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and post-2015 development agenda.

Ki-moon believed the agreement would assist in deepening joint efforts to meet the MDGs and would develop a post-2015 agenda for an equitable and sustainable future.

“This historic meeting of resourceful institutions has confirmed my belief that, by working together, we can demonstrate the power of multilateralism to secure a better future for all,” he commented.

Stronger statistical capacity would further help drive sophisticated decision making through the application of natural wealth accounting, a clearer understanding of the distributional effects of social and economic programmes and the ability to take account of the impacts of decisions on women, added AfDB president Donald Kaberuka.
 
“Improved access to statistics provides the basis for understanding the social and economic circumstances in which people live, enabling improved policies and programmes,” he said.

WBG president Jim Yong Kim believed the information-sharing agreement would enable organisations to determine whether or not progress towards development goals was being made.

“Just as the MDGs profoundly shaped our approach to development at the turn of the century, we expect the post-2015 development agenda to help to define a vision for a more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development path,” he said.