Rapheal John-Lall

A Unit­ed Na­tions con­sul­tant, speak­ing at a Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) launch last week, said the process of bring­ing T&T's sta­tis­ti­cal of­fice up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards would be a long one.

"Im­prov­ing sta­tis­ti­cal col­lec­tion takes a long time to get bet­ter and it would not hap­pen overnight," said Neil Dourm­sashkin, a con­sul­tant at PARIS 21, dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the CSO launch two Wednes­days ago.

The Busi­ness Guardian tried to con­tact Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie for his opin­ion on what the PARIS 21 con­sul­tant said, but Tewarie's of­fice said that the min­is­ter would speak about the CSO in greater de­tail at a me­dia con­fer­ence in the fu­ture.

Ster­ling Chadee, di­rec­tor of sta­tis­tics at the CSO, told the Busi­ness Guardian that PARIS 21 was in­vit­ed be­cause of its in­ter­na­tion­al reach and ex­pe­ri­ence in sta­tis­tics.

"We had in­vit­ed them be­cause their na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of sta­tis­tics is one of their ba­bies and what they are good at. This is their ex­per­tise. We had ap­proached them be­cause we nev­er had one for T&T," he said.

The Part­ner­ship in Sta­tis­tics for De­vel­op­ment in the 21st Cen­tu­ry (PARIS 21) was found­ed in No­vem­ber 1999 by the Unit­ed Na­tions, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, in re­sponse to the UN Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion on the goals of the UN Con­fer­ence on De­vel­op­ment.

The part­ner­ship's con­sor­tium was set up as a glob­al frame­work of na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cians, an­a­lysts, pol­i­cy-mak­ers, de­vel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­als and oth­er users of sta­tis­tics. It is a fo­rum and net­work to pro­mote, in­flu­ence and fa­cil­i­tate sta­tis­ti­cal ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment and the bet­ter use of sta­tis­tics.

Ava Ma­habir-Dass, se­nior sta­tis­ti­cal of­fi­cer at the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), who al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian said de­spite chal­lenges in the past, they are work­ing hard to build a new na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem (NSS).

"One of the things we are go­ing to do to ad­dress stake­hold­ers not get­ting in­for­ma­tion as eas­i­ly as they would like to, is dur­ing the next cou­ple of months, there will be the launch­ing of a new Web site. On that Web site, the da­ta will be much more ac­ces­si­ble. What we have re­alised at the CSO is that a lot of our stake­hold­ers do not re­alise we pro­duce the date that they need. I do not think that the sit­u­a­tion is as bad as peo­ple think it is. I think we do have a lot of in­for­ma­tion but what is hap­pen­ing is that we need to let peo­ple know what we have," she said.

Ma­habir-Dass said PARIS 21 will be giv­ing the CSO a guide as to how they could achieve the roadmap to build a na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem.

"They are ac­tu­al­ly telling us all the things we need to do to look at the sys­tem, as­sess the sys­tem and how we could col­lab­o­rate with all the stake­hold­ers and come up with a vi­sion of where we want to go and cre­ate the roadmap to get there."

She said the roadmap to es­tab­lish a new na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem in­cludes not on­ly the CSO but oth­er stake­hold­er bod­ies like the uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ment min­istries.

"We have a draft timetable and we are hop­ing that by the end of 2015 in­to 2016 we should be able to be fin­ished the process. Then we are go­ing to come up with a bud­get and a five-year plan. We are go­ing to cost each ac­tiv­i­ty and things like that. The Busi­ness Guardian, as an ex­am­ple, is one of the many stake­hold­ers that want to share in­for­ma­tion and we have to col­lab­o­rate with. The en­tire busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can look for­ward to more time­ly in­for­ma­tion," she said.

She said the CSO would just be one part of the NSS.

"We are not the on­ly ones who pro­duce sta­tis­tics. Oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, trade bod­ies, pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment bod­ies would al­so be in­volved. So you have the pro­duc­ers of sta­tis­tics and you al­so have the users which could be any­body from the me­dia to acad­e­mia to re­searchers."

Chadee said the plan is to im­prove the en­tire sys­tem.

"This would help the pro­duc­tion of sta­tis­tics and us­age of sys­tem," he said.

Ma­habir-Dass and Chadee spoke with the Busi­ness Guardian two Wednes­days ago at the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Na­tion­al Strat­e­gy for the De­vel­op­ment of Sta­tis­tics at the Hilton Trinidad Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain.

The IMF, in its 2014 Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion staff re­port press re­lease, said that grow­ing sta­tis­ti­cal short­com­ings have ren­dered the con­duct of sur­veil­lance ever hard­er in T&T and this must be ad­dressed. (See be­low)

In 2013, be­cause of the poor con­di­tions at the CSO build­ing on In­de­pen­dence Square, they have moved to Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

In May, Tewarie at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Radis­son Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, said the CSO will soon be mov­ing in­to a new­ly con­struct­ed build­ing on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, and oth­er as­pects of its re­struc­tur­ing will be rolled out in the com­ing months.

Sta­tis­tics and In­vestors

Joanne De­o­raj, deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Plan­ning, speak­ing at the CSO launch, said a na­tion­al sta­tis­tics strat­e­gy is im­por­tant for any coun­try's de­vel­op­ment.

"It is the ba­sis for a coun­try to learn the re­li­able sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tems that pro­duce da­ta to de­sign and mon­i­tor na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment poli­cies and pro­grammes. Equal­ly im­por­tant is the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al strat­e­gy to con­nect da­ta to meet our re­port­ing oblig­a­tions as a na­tion state to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies. The aim of de­vel­op­ing such a strat­e­gy is to im­prove our sta­tis­tics on an on­go­ing ba­sis and to strength­en na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal ca­pac­i­ty."

She al­so said she wants all the stake­hold­ers to use and un­der­stand the da­ta in the new na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem.

She said, in 2014, the Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished a man­age­ment tran­si­tion team to re­view all the re­ports of Sta­tis­tics Swe­den.

"I am hap­py to re­port that the work of that team came to an end on Tues­day. We have worked very hard and we have been ad­vised that Cab­i­net has ac­cept­ed all the rec­om­men­da­tions of the team as it re­lates to de­vel­op­ing the na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal of­fice, in re­la­tion to re­vised leg­is­la­tion, or­gan­i­sa­tion for in­fra­struc­ture and our re­la­tion­ship with users and sup­pli­ers," she said.

She said the work go­ing on with PARIS 21 will be close­ly aligned to the work of the tran­si­tion team for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of all the rec­om­men­da­tion for the CSO in the next 18 months.

"I am hop­ing in the next 18 months we will have a brand new, if not bet­ter recog­nised CSO for T&T, the re­gion and glob­al com­mu­ni­ty."

She added that good sta­tis­tics is the cor­ner­stone for good gov­er­nance and to man­age the econ­o­my.

"Good sta­tis­tics are nec­es­sary to en­sure pub­lic and pri­vate ef­fi­cient work­ing, for the so­ci­ety and the en­vi­ron­ment. When we talk about good sta­tis­tics we are talk­ing about time­ly, ac­cu­rate and de­tailed sta­tis­tics that can en­able the ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of T&T's macro-eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, mon­i­tor­ing and fis­cal pol­i­cy."

She said po­ten­tial in­vestors need da­ta and sta­tis­tics to know if and when to in­vest.

"In terms of macro-eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, we know that in­vestors are look­ing at with great in­ter­est for op­por­tu­ni­ties in our cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive in­dus­tries such as petro­chem­i­cals and oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing ven­tures and, im­por­tant­ly, our abil­i­ty to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my. To achieve a bal­anced econ­o­my, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion poli­cies are need­ed to be ef­fec­tive and to be ef­fec­tive they must iden­ti­fy ar­eas where there is val­ue and val­ue added in­dus­tries. Good sta­tis­tics can iden­ti­fy where eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties lie," she said.

She said they want to build not on­ly the quan­ti­ty of sta­tis­tics but the qual­i­ty of sta­tis­tics.

"The qual­i­ty of the sta­tis­tics re­al­ly give T&T the stan­dards that it needs to be com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er coun­tries, to give us the im­par­tial­i­ty and sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples of da­ta col­lec­tion that stand up to the Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem and oth­er sys­tems across the world," she said.