During his visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to participate in the Meeting of the Central Banks and Monetary Authorities of the OIC Member Countries, Dr. Savas Alpay, Director General of SESRIC, visited the Department of Statistics of Malaysia on 17 November 2011. Dr. Alpay has been received by H.E. Dr. Haji Abdul Rahman Bin Hasan, the Chief Statistician of Malaysia, at his office.

At the outset of the meeting, Dr. Alpay congratulated Dr. Bin Hasan for his new post as the Chief Statistician of Malaysia and wished him all the success in his work. Mr. Nabil Dabour, Director of Research Department at SESRIC, and some heads of departments and divisions at the Department of Statistics Malaysia have also attended the meeting.

During the visit, Dr. Alpay conducted a fruitful discussion and exchanged views with Dr. Bin Hasan, the Chief Statistician of Malaysia, on the possible ways and means of enhancing collaboration and cooperation between the two institutions, particularly in the areas of providing statistics and technical training on statistical capacity building for the NSOs of the OIC member countries. Dr. Alpay also briefed the Chief Statistician of Malaysia on the establishment of the OIC Statistical Commission (OIC-StatCom) and the role of SESRIC in organizing the annual sessions of this important Commission which brings together the heads of all the NSOs of the OIC member countries, and informed him that the 2nd Session of the OIC-StatCom will be organized by SESRIC, in collaboration with the IDB, in Turkey in May 2012.

On his part, Dr. Bin Hasan, the Chief Statistician of Malaysia, expressed his thanks and appreciations to Dr. Alpay and SESRIC for their great efforts in successfully organising valuable statistical capacity building training programmes in the NSOs of many OIC member countries. He also expressed the welcoming and readiness of the Department of Statistics of Malaysia to contribute significantly to the work of the OIC-StatCom and SESRIC capacity building programmes through sending experts from their various statistical division to provide their experiences on various areas of statistics to the needed NSOs of the member countries. At the end of the visit, Dr. Alpay presented to H.E. the Chief Statistician of Malaysia, some recent SESRIC publications.