Committee od Statistical Experts : report to the council on the work of the second session meeting held at Geneva from December 7th to 12th, 1933

The second meeting of the Committee of Experts did not take place until about 20 months after the first. The Committee noted that delays had been caused for “administrative and financial” reasons, but it considered that it should meet at least once a year if it was going to undertake the tasks given to it by the 1928 Convention. It also noted with satisfaction the number of countries that had ratified the Convention. No details are given in the report. It asked the secretariat toinvestigate to what extent the parties to the convention have adopted its provisions.

The members present were: M A Colombo (replacing C Gini); R H Coats; E Dana Durand; A W Flux, M Huber; G Jahn; H W Methorst (Netherlands) for part of the session; E Szturm de Sztrem: V Dore represented the International Institute of Agriculture; J W Nixon represented the International Labour Office; M Gayon (France) as a member of the sub-committee on classification of commodities.
• Trade: as the Committee of Experts was “under statutory obligation to report this year” (Article 3 of the Convention) on the results of an experiment in the recording of foreign trade “by country of provenance and destination”, it devoted much of this meeting (and much of its report) to that subject. The committee considered reports from 17 countries, all of which are current CES members except Egypt and South Africa.

• Prices, minerals and timber. A smaller part of the meeting was devoted to a uniform base period for price indices, the report of a sub-committee on mineral and metallurgical statistics. The committee also set up a small sub-committee consisting of only three members to consider timber statistics. Gunnar Jahn (of Norway) was chairman. He and R H Coats (of Canada) were selected as nationals of countries whose timber production is important. Mr Dore was selected to represent the International Institute of Agriculture.

Chapter I. Details of the Experiment -- Chapter II. Results of the Experiment -- Chapter III. Summary to be drawn from the results of the experiment