When President Thabo Mbeki addressed the 59th session of the UN general assembly on September 23, he noted that some "have pointed to the virtual certainty that we will fail to meet the millennium development goals (MDGs) we set ourselves four years ago".
"There may very well be others among us who will take a different view and say that a good beginning has been made and, therefore, that it is too early to say we have failed I have found it impossible not to answer that we have failed."
The president's urgent concern over the international community's commitment to these goals has been strongly reiterated within the country. When finance minister Trevor Manuel addressed senior public service managers on September 20, he said that the "task of a developmental state is to fight poverty and expand economic opportunities for the poor", and that the "two main thrusts of the budget of a developmental state must be how much the state spends fighting poverty and deprivation, and how much of the country's resources go towards expanding the economic opportunities of all its citizens".
Government's programme of action, the subject of last week's Inside Statistics, is one of the central pillars in addressing poverty alleviation and economic development. So, too, is national implementation of the MDGs.
Many of the targets of the MDGs were first set in the 1990s and became known as the international development goals.
In September 2000 the member states of the UN adopted the Millennium Declaration, which set out development goals and targets for the millennium.
The first seven goals are mutually reinforcing and directed at reducing poverty in all its forms, and it is in these areas that synergies between the programme of action and MDGs is most apparent.
Ensure environmental sustainability, reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, and achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least a hundred million slum dwellers by 2020.
The eighth goal - a global partnership for development - is about the means to achieve the first seven goals.
Challenges specifically identified in the programme of action include the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment; racial and gender inequalities; growth, development and modernisation of the First Economy; building a social security net to alleviate poverty; and addressing issues of the Second Economy - the structural manifestation of poverty.
Statements of intention, however good, have value only in so far as their implementation can be measured and monitored.
In South Africa, the foreign affairs department is the official overseer of the MDG process, while Statistics SA is the lead agency that manages the process.
This will involve generating development indicators to measure progress in implementing the MDGs, compiling an MDG country report for the secretary-general of the UN, and data assemblage and analysis.
The indicators will be used both for purposes of international comparison and for informing government's national monitoring and evaluation framework.
Support for the MDG country report will be provided by a team consisting of representatives from government departments and parastatal organisations, civil society organisations, foundations and the private sector.
Stats SA reports on the MDG process to the social cluster, made up of directors-general, ministers and deputy ministers - the same cluster charged with responsibility for the social deliverables of the programme of action.
The MDG country report will also be submitted to the social cluster for review and revision, and it is this cluster that will submit the report to cabinet for ratification.
The provision of high-quality statistics is central to monitoring of the implementation of the programme of action. In much the same way, the MDG process will support the development of statistical capacity for purposes of monitoring and evaluation, and promote the role of data in policy making.
Statistics, however, are not just about numbers and measurement: like the MDGs and the programme of action, they are finally about people and the conditions in which they live.
Pali Lehohla is South Africa's statistician-general and head of Statistics South Africa.