Spe­cial note should be tak­en of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s ac­knowl­edge­ment, in an ad­dress at an EU-UNCDF-OACP work­shop ear­li­er this week, of the im­por­tance of ac­cu­rate, up-to-date and eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble da­ta.

Mr Im­bert called for fill­ing gaps in da­ta avail­abil­i­ty and un­der­scored the need to “un­der­stand what the fac­tu­al is­sues are so that we can de­sign an ap­pro­pri­ate so­lu­tion.”

The ses­sion at which the min­is­ter spoke fo­cused specif­i­cal­ly on Ad­vanc­ing the Dig­i­tal Pay­ment and Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Agen­da and his call for more ac­cu­rate and time­ly da­ta was made in the con­text of bol­ster­ing T&T’s quest to be a re­gion­al leader in the trans­for­ma­tion of dig­i­tal fi­nance and the fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

But his com­ments can al­so be viewed more broad­ly, giv­en the im­por­tance of sta­tis­tics to all ar­eas of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. It al­so rais­es ques­tions about the slow pace of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) tran­si­tion to the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute of T&T (NSITT).

T&T is now in the sev­enth year of that process with no clear time­lines for when the much-need­ed NSITT will ma­te­ri­alise.

This is­sue does not fall di­rect­ly un­der the purview of Min­is­ter Im­bert, but as a se­nior Cab­i­net mem­ber, he should have more than pass­ing knowl­edge of such a crit­i­cal ex­er­cise.

In the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, one of the key Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) man­i­festo promis­es was the cre­ation of an in­de­pen­dent sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tute.

Af­ter tak­ing of­fice, the move to­ward the NSITT fell to Camille Robin­son-Reg­is as Plan­ning Min­is­ter. In 2018, she in­tro­duced the Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute of Trinidad and To­ba­go Bill in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal of­fices for strong gov­er­nance sys­tems.

That was in June 2018. On Feb­ru­ary 1, 2019, the Bill was re­ferred to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) and there was an un­der­tak­ing that a re­port would be sub­mit­ted by March 31, 2019. The Plan­ning Min­is­ter was ap­point­ed chair of that JSC.

Since then, how­ev­er, the leg­is­la­tion has been in lim­bo. The JSC met sev­en times be­tween Feb­ru­ary and March 2019 and pro­duced an in­ter­im re­port but has made al­most no progress since then.

Al­though grant­ed a two-month ex­ten­sion to May 31, 2019, the JSC failed to meet that dead­line and al­so failed to de­liv­er af­ter be­ing giv­en a fur­ther ex­ten­sion to Sep­tem­ber 27, 2019.

At present, the sta­tus of the Bill is un­known and many of the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who served on that JSC are no longer serv­ing in ei­ther the Sen­ate or the House. Lit­tle is al­so be­ing said about trans­form­ing the CSO to the long-promised NSITT.

How­ev­er, since Mr Im­bert has again raised the mat­ter of the im­por­tance of sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion, it is time to let cit­i­zens know why T&T is still sad­dled with a sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tute that has long out­lived its use­ful­ness.

The CSO op­er­ates un­der leg­is­la­tion that is more than 40 years old. Why is it tak­ing so long to com­plete the tran­si­tion to the NSITT?

Mr Im­bert is quite right when he un­der­scores the im­por­tance of ac­cu­rate, up-to-date, eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble da­ta. The ques­tion is, when will the Gov­ern­ment, of which he is a se­nior mem­ber, make that a re­al­i­ty in T&T?