Caricom launches online statistics database

Oct 15, 2009 Sports

— Highlights importance of statistics among members states

Caricom and representatives of other partnering agencies at the launch of the statistics online programme yesterday

In order to highlight statistics and its crucial role across a wide spectrum of activities, Statistics Day is being observed today by Guyana and the Caribeban Community as a whole. According to Caricom’s Assistant Secretary General, Lolita Applewhaite, statistics can influence daily decision-making faced by individuals, businesses, and even students to planning, policy-making, analysis and research activities of Governments, academia and other users.
Included in these activities is the use of statistics by the media in educating and informing the population of a country, Ambassador Applewhaite added.
She noted that expectations are that the observance of Caribbean Statistics Day would garner profile for statistics across the community. She said that the observance of a day specially devoted to Caribbean Statistics arose out of the need seen by the Standing Committee of Caribbean Statisticians (SCCS) to improve the image and visibility of statistics in the Region; to develop and reinforce a culture of statistics across member countries; to inform about the processes involved in the production of statistics and of the underlying principles and to promote the use of statistics in all aspect of decision-making.
For this reason, she noted that the 33rd meeting of the SCCS had agreed to the observance of Caribbean Statistics Day on October 15 annually. “Countries of the Region are also organising activities that could help to profile statistics on this day or during this period…Some countries are having a whole week of activities.”
According to Ambassador Applewhaite the theme, ‘Better Statistics, Better Management, Better Development Outcomes’ suggested for Caribbean Statistics Day follows that of the High-Level Advocacy Forum convened on July 30 last in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
“On that occasion the Caribbean Community Secretariat joined with the EU and other developmental partners in advocating for statistics. The high level forum and Caribbean Statistics Day therefore form a thrust towards greater advocacy for statistics that can ultimately redound to the improvement in the quality and range of statistics provided disseminated and analysed.”
And in order to ensure that Caricom States have access to information, online dissemination facilities were launched yesterday at the Caricom Secretariat, Turkeyen. Among the facilities launched were Tradsys – Regional Trade Information System which allows member states to access the Regional Trade Information System via the internet, a development which was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Caricom Regional Census e-portal, an online data warehouse designed to facilitate reporting and analysis of census data which received from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); CaricomInfo v1.0, a database system that helps to organise and present data on social development indicators, a programme which was funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Also launched yesterday was a helpdesk established primarily to assist the National Statistics Officers and other organisations in member states engaged in the production and dissemination of statistics.
According to the statistical venture it has also been in receipt of funding from the World Bank Trust fund for capacity building. She related that among the permanent partners from whom support will be sustained is CIDA.
According to Programme Director for Regional Statistics, Dr Philomena Harrison, “as part of our mandate we are putting in place a lot of capacity building activities, some of which will be funded by the EU…to improve and harmonise statistics.
“Across the board we have funding to support the development of statistics.”
Dr Harrison also disclosed that Caricom, with partnering agencies, is already working assiduously on the issue of harmonisation on several fronts including in the area of social and environmental statistics.
She related that information included in the database though drawn from member states might be limited. “We will have information as far back as we can given our own limitation.”