Last week, the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Eclac) host­ed a con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain that aimed to re­view progress that has been made through­out the re­gion in achiev­ing the Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals (MDGs) while set­ting the stage for new Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs).

Es­tab­lished in 2000, the MDGs were eight tar­gets that coun­tries com­pris­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions agreed would be ap­pro­pri­ate to raise the stan­dard of liv­ing of the ma­jor­i­ty of the world's pop­u­la­tion.

While the sta­tis­tics are not read­i­ly avail­able, there is a per­cep­tion that T&T has made good progress in achiev­ing some of the goals, such as erad­i­cat­ing ex­treme pover­ty and hunger, achiev­ing uni­ver­sal pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion and com­bat­ting dis­eases in­clud­ing HIV/Aids and malar­ia.

Giv­en the sur­pris­ing­ly large num­ber of re­ports of ei­ther moth­ers or chil­dren dy­ing in child­birth, it is un­like­ly that T&T has achieved the goals of re­duc­ing child mor­tal­i­ty and im­prov­ing ma­ter­nal health. This is de­spite the fact that gov­ern­ments since 2000 have spent bil­lions of dol­lars on the sys­tem of health­care.

In terms of the goal of pro­mot­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and the em­pow­er­ment of women, the ev­i­dence of the achieve­ment of girls and women through­out the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem–from nurs­ery to ter­tiary–as well as the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in Par­lia­ment, the Ju­di­cia­ry, the pro­fes­sions and in busi­ness may point to out­per­for­mance.

The last ma­jor goal–en­sur­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty–is not one that T&T pol­i­cy­mak­ers have paid much more than lip ser­vice to un­til quite re­cent­ly.

The pe­ri­od for achiev­ing the MDGs is due to come to an end this year, which means that be­fore there is se­ri­ous lo­cal dis­cus­sion about the SDGs–which are set to be ac­tive be­tween 2015 and 2030–there should be a thor­ough do­mes­tic dis­cus­sion and re­view of the MDGs and the ex­tent to which the coun­try has lived up to its com­mit­ments made 15 years ago.

The col­lapse of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice has lim­it­ed this coun­try's abil­i­ty to pub­lish, in a time­ly fash­ion, im­por­tant eco­nom­ic sta­tis­tics on trade, un­em­ploy­ment and the bal­ance of pay­ments.

This might mean that the CSO, and the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment de­part­ments, are even more ham­strung in pub­li­cis­ing the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in ex­treme pover­ty, the ex­tent of child mor­tal­i­ty or the num­ber of chil­dren who are ac­tu­al­ly at­tend­ing pri­ma­ry schools for more than 90 per cent of the school days.

One of the goals that T&T must se­ri­ous­ly ad­dress, there­fore, is the im­prov­ment in the col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of da­ta that touch all seg­ments of life in T&T. Giv­en the ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500 bil­lion that has been spent by gov­ern­ments be­tween 2000 and 2015, the ques­tion needs to be asked whether the pop­u­la­tion has re­ceived val­ue for mon­ey in health­care and ed­u­ca­tion, which are im­por­tant facets of the MDGs. Be­tween 2000 and 2015, there has been a sharp in­crease in the amount of mon­ey dis­trib­uted in trans­fers and sub­si­dies, which is main­ly aimed at en­sur­ing that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble are able to keep their heads above the ex­treme pover­ty line.

In a small, eth­ni­cal­ly di­vid­ed coun­try, this ap­proach to so­cial sec­tor spend­ing is li­able to be politi­cised, both in terms of who gets the trans­fer or the sub­sidy and for how long.

Along with the nec­es­sary re­form of da­ta col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion, then, some se­ri­ous think­ing needs to go in­to im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the coun­try's an­nu­al trans­fer and sub­sidy al­lo­ca­tion, in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the com­pa­nies that get the li­on's share of gov­ern­ment con­tracts.