To­day is Caribbean Sta­tis­tics Day.

And the theme for this year’s ob­ser­vance is “Con­nect­ing the world with da­ta we can trust.”

But do you trust the da­ta that you are pre­sent­ed with from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the body that is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for tak­ing cen­sus­es, col­lect­ing, com­pil­ing, analysing and pub­lish­ing sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to all the so­cial and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties in this coun­try?

Well, if your an­swer to that ques­tion is no, then you need not feel too bad about it be­cause this coun­try’s di­rec­tor of sta­tis­tics Sean O’Brien does not feel the CSO is liv­ing up to its man­date.

And he more than any­one should know.

“We must ask our­selves: ‘Is the CSO re­al­ly ful­fill­ing this man­date?’ And I, as the chief sta­tis­ti­cian of T&T, I can tell you, no, not re­al­ly,” O’Brien said dur­ing an event host­ed last De­cem­ber by the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

O’Brien said the way the sys­tem cur­rent­ly func­tions the CSO is ob­struct­ed from gath­er­ing the da­ta and dis­sem­i­nat­ing it.

“We at the CSO can­not pro­vide the gov­ern­ment with ed­u­ca­tion­al sta­tis­tics un­less we have as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. We can­not pro­vide health sta­tis­tics in the ab­sence of the Min­istry of Health,” he stat­ed.

“A large part of my job is to be tak­ing the blame for not sup­ply­ing da­ta that I don’t get in the first place,” O’Brien stat­ed.

And as such O’Brien said an over­haul is wel­comed.

That over­haul is ex­pect­ed to come in the form of the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute of T&T (NSITT).

“The CSO is to be trans­formed in­to the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute, which is en­vi­sioned to be more leg­isla­tive­ly po­tent, a more au­tonomous, more in­de­pen­dent body that would have the pow­er to more ef­fec­tive­ly co-or­di­nate the na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal sys­tem,” he stat­ed.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced the ex­pect­ed trans­for­ma­tion in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion ear­li­er this month.

“Time­ly eco­nom­ic and busi­ness de­ci­sion-mak­ing will al­so be dri­ven by the trans­for­ma­tion by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice in­to the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute,” Im­bert said.

“The leg­is­la­tion to cre­ate this mod­ern sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tute, which re­quires the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion, has al­so lan­guished in the Par­lia­ment for sev­er­al years. But to com­pete in to­day’s world, pub­li­ca­tion of trade and eco­nom­ic da­ta, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment and fi­nan­cial da­ta must oc­cur in re­al-time,” he said.

When you vis­it the CSO’s web­site the ma­jor­i­ty of the “vi­tal sta­tis­tics” list­ed are on­ly up­dat­ed to as re­cent as two years ago.

Oth­er da­ta are even more out of date.

The pur­pose of the NSITT Bill, 2018 is to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute in T&T and al­so to re­peal and re­place the Sta­tis­tics Act, Chap. 19:02.

The Bill would be in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tions 4 and 5 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of T&T and is there­fore re­quired to be passed by a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty of three-fifths of the mem­bers of each House.

So the gov­ern­ment will need sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion to pass the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion to es­tab­lish the NSITT.

Econ­o­mist Dr Roger Ho­sein said the NSITT is ur­gent­ly need­ed in this coun­try.

“The NSITT to me is as im­por­tant to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T as some see the re­duc­tion in the crime rate and there­fore I urge pol­i­cy­mak­ers to work to­geth­er in a man­ner and form to bring about the NSITT, just as we are try­ing to fix the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness rank­ing for T&T in the short­est pe­ri­od pos­si­ble,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein said “in­for­ma­tion asym­me­try” is a se­ri­ous prob­lem in any econ­o­my de­vel­oped or de­vel­op­ing coun­try.

“With in­for­ma­tion asym­me­try what hap­pens is that in­for­ma­tion re­mains in the hands of one group and out of the hands of an­oth­er group and there­fore it skews the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process in favour of the group with the in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

“That’s not some­thing we should en­cour­age and in­deed it is some­thing that the gov­ern­ment should try to change in the short­est space of time and this is where the CSO has a crit­i­cal role to play in the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment process of any coun­try,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein lament­ed the out­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion be­ing pre­sent­ed in crit­i­cal da­ta such as the Con­tin­u­ous Sam­pling Sur­vey of the Pop­u­la­tion and the An­nu­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Di­gest say­ing it is “ridicu­lous.”

Lack of da­ta lead­ing to “guessti­mates”

He said the lack of in­for­ma­tion would lead to “guessti­mates” rather than con­crete, ver­i­fi­able in­for­ma­tion.

“I say this be­cause I am con­cerned about some of the num­bers I see com­ing out with re­spect to GDP so for ex­am­ple in 2020 it was stat­ed that the econ­o­my con­tract­ed -6.8 per cent but for the months of March to Oc­to­ber we are hear­ing that al­most 100,000 peo­ple in the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor were ba­si­cal­ly un­em­ployed and that is al­most 1/6 of the labour force,” Ho­sein said.

“So if al­most 1/6 of the labour force is idle and a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the as­so­ci­at­ed cap­i­tal is not em­ployed then I would have thought that the GDP con­trac­tion would have been even larg­er but even so rather than leav­ing the ac­tu­al num­ber up to guessti­ma­tion as I am do­ing here it would be good to have ac­tu­al da­ta from the firms that are sur­veyed to help with this process and we would need to know as the pub­lic what could be done to im­prove on that sur­vey of es­tab­lish­ment re­sults,” he said.

In Feb­ru­ary last year, a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment chaired by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is was es­tab­lished to con­sid­er and re­port on the bill.

“In T&T sev­er­al com­plaints by the users and oth­er stake­hold­ers of of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics about the type and qual­i­ty of da­ta ac­tu­al­ly em­anate from weak­ness­es in the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Sys­tem,” a re­port from the Plan­ning Min­istry pre­sent­ed to the JSC stat­ed.

“To the ex­tent that weak­ness­es of the NSS re­main un­recog­nised and their warn­ing signs con­se­quent­ly dis­re­gard; then the of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics need­ed for bring­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in­to fruition will re­main sub-op­ti­mal de­spite the nu­mer­ous and con­tin­u­ing im­prove­ments,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Hand­book of Sta­tis­ti­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tions “the qual­i­ty of of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics de­pends large­ly on the co­op­er­a­tion of cit­i­zens, en­ter­pris­es and oth­er re­spon­dents in pro­vid­ing ap­pro­pri­ate and re­li­able da­ta to sta­tis­ti­cal agen­cies.”

CSO blocked from BIR da­ta

One of the main is­sues af­fect­ing the CSO is that it has been de­barred from col­lect­ing da­ta from the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

“This has se­vere­ly ham­pered the Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice from the ef­fi­cient com­pi­la­tion of gross do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion da­ta us­ing the ex­pen­di­ture ap­proach, known in sta­tis­ti­cal cir­cles as GDPE,” the re­ports stat­ed.

“The ac­cu­rate and time­ly pro­duc­tion of GDPE fos­ters greater eco­nom­ic trans­paren­cy and there­by as­sists de­vel­op­ing na­tions such as T&T in se­cur­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment as well as low­er costs of in­ter­na­tion­al bor­row­ing,” it stat­ed.

The re­port said that the in­abil­i­ty of the CSO to col­lect da­ta on Val­ue Added Tax from the BIR “has re­sult­ed in GDP fig­ures ex­hibit­ing less ro­bust­ness than sim­i­lar da­ta that em­anate from coun­tries that de­vote far less re­sources to­wards the pro­duc­tion of of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics and has in­creased the re­sponse bur­den on es­tab­lish­ments.”

As a re­sult, the re­port stat­ed that the trans­for­ma­tion of the CSO to the NSITT will “bear sub­stan­tial and far-reach­ing ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of T&T.”

BIR stat­ed that the last time it pro­vid­ed da­ta to the CSO was ten years ago.

“Dur­ing dis­cus­sions with the CSO and BIR in about 2008-2009, the CSO in­formed the BIR that it could no longer ac­cept the ag­gre­gate in­for­ma­tion that was be­ing pro­vid­ed by the BIR and that it need­ed more spe­cif­ic tax­pay­er in­for­ma­tion. The BIR in­formed the CSO that un­der Sec­tion 4 of the In­come Tax Act, the BIR could not pro­vide the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion to the CSO,” it stat­ed.

On Tues­day the world ob­serves World Sta­tis­tics Day.

“Sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta dri­ves a myr­i­ad of de­ci­sions that im­pact the lives of the peo­ple of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) and world­wide.

“In this pe­ri­od of the Nov­el Coro­n­avirus glob­al pan­dem­ic, COVID-19, sta­tis­tics are re­quired to track the sta­tus of the pan­dem­ic, and its eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pact, re­in­forc­ing its val­ue to so­ci­ety,” Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ir­win La Rocque has said.

“Sta­tis­tics as a sci­ence of learn­ing pro­vid­ed an es­sen­tial ser­vice, through mak­ing avail­able da­ta for de­ci­sion-mak­ing in the face of un­cer­tain­ty,” La Rocque stat­ed.

La Rocque said the ef­fect on trade, gov­ern­ment rev­enues, un­em­ploy­ment as well as ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion for chil­dren be­low the pover­ty line are some of the is­sues sta­tis­tics could help gov­ern­ments know how to bet­ter tack­le the is­sues aris­ing from the pan­dem­ic.

“Sound pol­i­cy de­ci­sions by gov­ern­ments on re­stric­tions to be put in place, on the clos­ing or re­open­ing of na­tion­al bor­ders, schools and cer­tain busi­ness places, will on­ly be pos­si­ble by util­is­ing trust­ed da­ta from the sta­tis­ti­cal of­fices and sys­tems,” La Rocque said.