The in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice's (CSO) new of­fice on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, and the launch of its new web­site sig­nal a new phase in its op­er­a­tions, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie said yes­ter­day at a cer­e­mo­ny at the CSO's new head of­fice.

"This is an im­por­tant new phase in the life of the CSO. This spank­ing new five-sto­ry build­ing will house the en­tire CSO. I think you all know there have been prob­lems in the last year and a half. Some staff have al­ready moved and some have not yet moved in and that has to do with the prepa­ra­tion of the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP). That staff is still on Park Street. They have not moved yet be­cause they are in­volved in the prepa­ra­tion of the bud­get and in Oc­to­ber will be mov­ing here," he said.

He said the build­ing on Fred­er­ick Street has been leased for the next five years.

At the func­tion, the min­is­ter launched the CSO's new web­site, www.cso.gov.tt, which he said is more user friend­ly and will pro­vide da­ta in a time­ly fash­ion.

Tewarie said he wrote to in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies like the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and Moody's Rat­ing Agency to ask them for the kind of da­ta they need from T&T.

He said he re­ceived a let­ter from Chris­tine La­garde, the head of the IMF, who said the in­sti­tu­tion is will­ing to work with T&T to pro­duce GDP sta­tis­tics not on­ly an­nu­al­ly but on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis.

Let­ters were al­so sent to the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try of Com­merce, the re­gion­al cham­bers, the En­er­gy Cham­ber, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) as well as oth­er lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions on what they need from the CSO.

"I am sure the IMF, Moody's and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions would be very pleased with the progress we have made and we have char­tered a clear course with a time­line," he said.

Tewarie al­so that the CSO will be es­tab­lished as a new au­tonomous body.

"It will be very dif­fer­ent from now where it is a di­vi­sion and was moved from min­istry to min­istry. What is need­ed is a na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tu­tion that is func­tion­ing au­tonomous­ly. The re­struc­tur­ing is to be based on work con­duct­ed by con­sul­tants from Sta­tis­tics Swe­den who pro­duced a se­ries of re­ports," he said.

Di­rec­tor of Sta­tis­tics at the CSO, Ster­ling Chadee, who spoke at the cer­e­mo­ny, said CSO sta­tis­tics will now be up­dat­ed much faster than in the past and the qual­i­ty will be bet­ter and said the CSO has re­turned to full op­er­a­tion.

"We have re­moved the back­log in the labour force sta­tis­tics. In 2011, it lagged by four quar­ters or a year. Now we are in 2015 and we have pro­duced the full quar­ter­ly sta­tis­tics. We have al­so be­gun to ad­dress the back­log in the trade da­ta and now have trade da­ta up to March 2015.

"The CSO now pro­duces time­ly, rel­e­vant sta­tis­tics to sup­port plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment. Right now our pol­i­cy­mak­ers can un­der­stand the eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals such as in­fla­tion, GDP, trade, re­tail sales, pro­duc­tion in 2015 not with old da­ta but with up-to-date da­ta," he said.