The CountrySTAT

The CountrySTAT-Bhutan is a web-based system for dissemination of harmonized national food and agricultural statistical data along with metadata for analysis and policy making. In recognition of the existing and potential uses of the CountrySTAT, the Ministry of Agriculture, Royal Government of Bhutan has taken on the challenge of establishing the CountrySTAT. The system contains mainly of regularly updated statistical data on land use, agricultural (crops, livestock and forest) productions, exports and imports of agricultural products, agricultural inputs, commodity prices, farm machineries, and development infrastructures. It also provides links to relevant official documents and statistical websites around the globe.

Relation to FAOSTAT

The CountrySTAT-Bhutan shall serve as a complementary system to FAOSTAT. Its outputs are designed to load easily into FAOSTAT. This process or flow, as envisioned in the development of this system, ensures only one source for the data and improves FAOSTAT's capacity to provide high quality statistical data at the international level. Following the FAOSTAT framework, the CountrySTAT shall have statistical data series surrounded by statistical metadata.

Organization of CountrySTAT-Bhutan

The databases in the CountrySTAT-Bhutan are organized under three major groups: national core, district level (dzongkhags) and sub-district level (geogs). The national core contents the data consolidated to national level and shared with FAOSTAT database while the district level and sub-district level data are those disaggregated to sub-national levels with more relevance to national plan and policy makers, researchers and projects intended for rural development. This arrangement provides end-users with the possibility of navigating through the databases from either geographic or thematic paths.

The development of the CountrySTAT-Bhutan was started in June 2007 at the Policy and Planning Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and completed in the first week of March 2008. The project was supported by the FAOs Netherlands Partnership Programme (FNPP).

Metadata for the National Agricultural Statistics

The CountrySTAT system requires the preparation and publication of good metadata. All the databases and statistical tables posted in the CountrySTAT are adequately backed up by metadata. The detail metadata on the national food and agricultural statistical system can be accessed by clicking on "Metada" under "Documents" on the left.