CARIBBEAN                          COMMUNITY                        SECRETARIAT

 

 

            TWENTY-EIGHTH MEETING OF THE                               RESTRICTED

            STANDING COMMITTEE OF

CARIBBEAN STATISTICIANS                                            SCCS/2003/28/8

 

 

            Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands                    

            3-5 November 2003                                                               29 October 2003

 

 

 

 

ANNUAL REPORT OF ANGUILLA STATISTICS OFFICE, 2002-2003

Attached for the attention of the Meeting is Paper entitled Annual Report of Anguilla Statistics Office, 2002-2003.

Annual Report of Anguilla Statistics Office, 2002-3

Human Resources and Organization of the Statistics Department

The Statistics department consists of six positions:  a Statistician, three Statistical Officers and two Statistical Assistants. One of the Statistical Officer positions has been vacant since July 2002. The three areas that the Statistical Officers are responsible for are:

 

Social Statistics and Household Surveys

Tourism and Internal Trade Statistics

Economic Statistics including the NI accounts and BOP and Business Surveys

 

The UK Department for International Development has been funding a project to develop the statistical programmes in Anguilla since October 2000. The funding includes a Technical Officer who has been working as the Chief Statistician and funds for training and equipment.

 

A Statistician was appointed in February 2002 to take over the management of the Department. She left to take the MSc in Official Statistics at Southampton University in September 2002 and returned in May 2003. Lori-Rae Alleyne-Franklin is at present working on her thesis and will take over as Chief Statistician by January 2004.

 

The Statistical Officer responsible for Economic Statistics, Cheprene Browne, went to the University of Technology in Jamaica for three months over the summer to complete part 2 of the Certificate Programme in Economic and Social Statistics. Statistical Assistant, Deavene Guishard, also took part 1 of the same programme at the same time. For much of the year the office was operating with only two members of staff plus the TCO from the UK.

National Accounts, Balance of Payments and Business Surveys

The ECCB has provided training to the Statistical Officer and the Statistical Assistant for Economic Statistics in the National Accounts and Balance of Payments. A special effort was made this year to work with the business community to improve the response rates of the business survey.

 

For the first time the annual business survey was approved by EXCO to be conducted under the Statistics Act of Anguilla. They also asked the Statistics Department to add a survey to collect information on low paid occupations for the Minimum Wage Committee. The approval by EXCO made business legally obliged to complete the survey.

 

A response rate of 89% was achieved for business with 4 or more employees. This high response rate was attributed to a number of factors:

 

 

Future plans for this area include revising the National Accounts estimates to better represent the present structure of the Anguillian economy especially business services. Our preliminary estimates show that this sector is second in importance to the tourism sector. The business register will be cleaned up before proceeding with the annual business survey in 2004.

 

There has been some preliminary work in producing other economic statistics than those produced through the survey. These include cargo data, building permits data, fisheries, agricultural and manufacturing data.

 

Tourism Statistics

Progress has been slow in automating  immigration arrivals data. There is a RFP in the works and it is hoped to have the computer system operating by next year. There is a great deal of reluctance to have Anguillians complete ED cards even those who do not live in Anguilla. As a result the tourism data is under estimated.

 

The departure data is very poor quality because ED copies are not collected as visitors leave. As a result it is very difficult to produce population estimates. In addition so information is collected by age and sex of arrivals and departures. With the computerized immigration system we should be able to produce population estimates by age and sex in the future.

 

Visitor surveys were carried out in January, February, March and August this year. Air line agents handed out the forms and the departure tax officers collected the forms. The forms were designed in Teleform and the competed forms were scanned. Apart from the usual information visitors were also asked about their activities and opinion on different services that they used during their stay.

 

Occupancy Rates are now produced monthly from the Accommodation tax file. The quality has been improved recently. A provisional set of average revenue data has also been produced by size of hotel.

 

International Trade

Export and import data is published monthly with detailed commodity data being published annually. There is no volume data as this is not input into ASYCUDA by Customs. They tell us that the system will only accept kilograms and pounds as units.

 

CARTAC assisted us in solving our problems with EUROTRACE  and imports have been published according to the SITC.

 

Consumer Price Index

The CPI is collected using hand held computers and published quarterly within 3 weeks of the end of the month. The CPI is produced using an EXCEL workbook.

 

Poverty Assessment Survey

A survey of Living Conditions was carried out in July 2002 and the report was published in February 2003. It consisted of a Household Finances questionnaire and a Labour Force questionnaire whose databases were linked to the household census database.

 

Primary Health Care Surveys

The Statistics department carried out its first Computer Assisted Telephone Interview Survey. A list of residential phone numbers was provided from Cable and Wireless. From this sample we took a 1 in 5 sample. The questionnaire application was programmed in ACCESS and the tables were produced using SPSS. Headsets were purchase from www.headsets.com.

 

These headsets have dial pads, volume control, microphone and headphones.

The survey was a Reproductive Health Survey which collected information for the Anguilla Family Planning Association and the Health Department about knowledge of Contraceptives and Contraceptive use.

 

 

Policy Paper of a Centralized Statistical System for Anguilla

A policy paper was written proposing a centralized Statistical System for Anguilla. This would avoid duplication of statistical resources and allow statistics to be as politically neutral as possible.

 

Census of Population 2001

The Census of Population and Housing took place in May 2001. Collection was completed by July 2001, scanning by September, editing by January 2002 and tabulations were completed by April 2002.

 

Five publications were written in 2002 which include tables and descriptive analysis. They are:

 

 

The administrative report was written in 2003.

 

 

Penny Hope-Ross

Chief Statistician, Anguilla

September 30, 2003