Ms Josephina Bitonio, a member of the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC) Technical Working Group on statistics of cooperatives, met with Dr Lisa Bersales and her colleagues in the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) on September 11, 2017 in Quezon City. The purpose of the meeting was to brief the PSA about the meeting of the technical working group on the statistics of cooperatives discussing the Conceptual Framework for the Purpose of Measurement of Cooperatives and its Operationalization.

Ms Bitonio, who is an Assistant Regional Director at the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) of the Philippines also shared the two page country brief on statistics of cooperatives for the Philippines. It was agreed during this meeting that: A task force is created toward improving statistics on cooperatives with CSA holding its secretariat responsibilities; the CDA will present available data on cooperatives to the PSA toward a discussion of what data needs to be generated from which sources; and a follow up meeting is scheduled for November 17, 2017 for the CDA to present the Conceptual Framework for the Purpose of Measurement of Cooperatives and its Operationalization to the PSA.

This meeting was part of the larger efforts by the ILO and the other members of the COPAC toward developing more comprehensive statistics on cooperatives which are also harmonized with other statistical systems. Dr. Lisa Bersales will also be the chairperson for the 20th International Conference of Labour Statisticians that will take place at the ILO in Geneva in October 2018.