The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asian (ESCWA) organizes every March an annual event to mark the International Women’s Day. This event is organized in recognition of the role played by Women in the Arab region and their efforts towards realizing wellbeing and prosperity for her community and nation. This year’s event, which takes place in a delicate time in the region’s history, carries the theme: Empowering Women, Empowering a Nation: Be bold for change.

When the long-simmering social crises in Arab countries erupted to the surface in 2011, these events immediately shifted government attention from the economic to the social fields. Suddenly it became clear that years of substantial economic growth had not improved social outcomes and Governments rushed to increase public employment and wages, improve services, increase social transfers and invest in social infrastructure.

The International Comparison Program (ICP) team at ESCWA’s has been exploring new techniques to enhance price statistics in the region by using technology and Big Data tools as a non-traditional data collection method complementing traditional data collection. This initiative aims to improve data quality, raise the frequency of data collection, reduce field visits and increase work efficiency by ensuring regular automated extraction of price data from online outlets for both CPI and ICP purposes.