Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 8 November 2021 – Forty participants from government agencies from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the ASEAN Secretariat, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, research institutions, and development agencies increased their knowledge on how to measure and monitor the performance of the transport sector in the ASEAN region and engaged in fruitful interregional dialogue, which took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Following a first regional scoping workshop which took place in August 2021 in Indonesia, the second regional workshop on sustainable transport indicators further supported the implementation of the KLTSP and a harmonised approach for transport sector monitoring. It did so by bringing together stakeholders from the ASEAN region working at the intersection of transport, energy and environmental disciplines to promote greater awareness and creating knowledge to measure and monitor transport sector performance.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

• To present the background paper for sustainable transport indicators in the ASEAN
• To discuss on what elements should be included in the development of guidelines and monitoring framework for sustainable transport indicators

After a brief introduction by Mr. Tali Trigg, the project director of TCC, two speakers from the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) of Malaysia presented on “Moving towards sustainable transport”, which was delivered by Dr. Fatimah Kamal, and on the topic of “Demand Side Management” by Professor Dr. Nasrudin Abd. Rahim respectively, giving an overview about the status quo of transport in Malaysia and outlining the challenges faced by policymakers.

“The important thing is to start”, was one of the key messages given by the main speaker and moderator of the event, GIZ TCC consultant Mr. Sudhir Gota. In his presentation, which constituted the main part of the day, he referred to the overly cautious approach that ASEAN member states often use when it comes to data collection; afraid of collecting inaccurate data. “Don’t be scared of data, the quality of your dataset can always be improved through the process”, was another take-home message from Mr. Gota. Not only should the countries start with the data collection, Mr. Gota also broadened the participants’ knowledge on indicators and data, as well as provided them with approaches to conduct these activities.

In a breakout session the participants were able to engage in an exercise which aimed at finding similarities and best practices used by different countries and following being able to outline the requirements which would increase their capability to collect/report data.

“We had the opportunity to interact on an interregional level to learn from what other countries do in order to improve our own monitoring”, noted one of the participants. In general, the approaches are different, but the challenges regarding the collection and reporting of data appear quite similar in the region.

This was also remarked by Mr. Trigg, who ended the day with a short summary of the workshop. He again encouraged the participants to begin with the collection of a small amount of indicators first, and then improve as the process continues.

The next workshop of this format will take place in Bangkok, Thailand in March 2017 and will focus on developing more detailed guidelines on how to measure and report indicators within a harmonised ASEAN wide framework.

A detailed report of the second regional workshop on sustainable transport indicators can be viewed here.

The presentations can be found here.