WITH only 10 years left to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, close monitoring is needed to ensure that Malaysia is on the right track.
Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin noted that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators would be crucial to help monitor the progress towards developing implementation strategies, allocating resourced accordingly and ensuring the accountability of all stakeholders.
Hence, he said the newly-launched DOSM’s SDG Indicators, Malaysia 2019 report will provide evidence on SDG progress and thus become an evaluation tool towards the 2030 Agenda.
“Malaysia has achieved a better level of indicator availability with the addition of 37 new indicators and 18 indicators at the district level.
“This, in turn, can help in the measurement and monitoring of the SDG at the smallest area. Over 72% of the data are from other ministries and agencies while 28% data are from DOSM,” he said during the launch of the SDG report yesterday.
Mohd Uzir said three goals achieved the highest data availability, namely Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being (86%), Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (83%) and Goal 4: Quality Education (75%).
Meanwhile, nine goals which have reached the level of data availability exceeding 50% are Goal 1: No Poverty; Goal 2: Zero Hunger; Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being; Goal 4: Quality Education; Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy; Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth; Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; Goal 13: Climate Action and Goal 17: Partnerships To Achieve The Goal.
Goals that record data availability of less than 30% are Goal 11: Sustainable Cities And Communities and Goal 16: Peace And Justice Strong Institutions.
SDG integrates and balances five focus areas, namely People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership.
”For the People focus area, the overall incidence of poverty improved from 7.6% (525,743 households) in 2016 to 5.6% (405,441 households) in 2019.
“Prosperity focus area showed the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at constant prices in 2019 grew 3.9% compared to 3.6% in 2018,” he said, adding that there were seven states which GDP outpaced the national level, namely Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Negeri Sembilan, Labuan, Perlis, Kedah and Kelantan.
He said the proportion of the forested area has decreased by 0.3 percentage point to 55.3% in 2018 compared to 2017 (55.6%) for the Planet focus area, with the highest proportion of forested area being in Sabah with 64.5% and the lowest recorded by Melaka with 3.3%.
He said the indicator development effort will be continued to reduce the data gaps for an inclusive SDG monitoring with the commitment from the relevant ministries and agencies.
“DOSM will also pursue engagement with civil society organisations (CSO), non-governmental organisations (NGO) and academia related to SDG data sharing,” he added.
For the purpose of disseminating and sharing data related to SDG, DOSM has launched the National SDG Progress Monitoring System (SDG Dashboard) in March 2019 consisting of 81 statistical indicators.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Civil Society Organisations (CSO)-SDG Alliance co-chair Prof Datuk Denison Jayasooria said for 2021, the All-Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia on SDG (APPGM-SDG) is proposing to include an additional 20 parliamentary constituencies, which would be in the states that are not covered in 2020.
“The pilot 10 constituencies of 2020 will undergo phase two of SDG localisation in 2021,” he said.
A sum of RM5 mil is allocated for 2021’s activities including for awareness and capacity building; mapping, research, documentation and publication; community projects; coordination of APPGM-SDG; and contingencies.
“APPGM-SDG illustrates a bi-partisan action in localising SDGs. The field visits and local consultations illustrate that local people know the issues and what solutions need to take place,” he noted.
Previously, DOSM has published the “Initial Assessment of the SDG Indicators for Malaysia, 2018” which present preliminary assessment of the availability of data for 244 SDG indicators in Malaysia. – Dec 11, 2020
