CARIBBEAN                          COMMUNITY                           SECRETARIAT

            TWENTY-EIGHTH MEETING OF THE                               RESTRICTED

STANDING COMMITTEE OF

            CARIBBEAN STATISTICIANS                                            SCCS/2003/28/25

            Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands                    

            3-5 November 2003                                                               3 November 2003

PROGRESS REPORT - THE BAHAMAS

ADMINISTRATION

The Department of Statistics has a staff complement of eighty-two (82) permanent members, two (2) temporary officers, four (4) officers on loan and one (1) part-time officer.  Seventy (71) permanent staff members, and four (4) officers-on-loan are stationed in the New Providence office and eleven (11) permanent, two (2) temporary and one (1)  part-time officer in the Grand Bahama office.

Resignation

One Assistant Director

Promotion

Three Senior Statisticians

One Statistical Assistant Grade I

Reclassification

Two Filing Assistants to Clerks

Study Leave

One Clerk is on study leave for a period of three years pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics.  One Statistician Grade III, on a Limited In-Service Training Award (salary only), continues studies toward a Master’s degree in Economics.

Graduates

One Data Entry Operator received an Associate degree in Computer Information Systems, while a Clerk graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Business.

DATA PROCESSING

The Freeport Office is now on-line to the Government Wide Area Network.  The department is presently awaiting the installation of twenty-two (22) Internet access from the GWAN, and the launching of a homepage on the GWAN Website.

The Worm virus affected the Network Server and all the Windows 2000 workstations.  The workstations were immediately patched and the virus removed.  However, the Server encountered other problems and had to be reformatted and Windows 2000 Server re-installed.

All the Windows 95 workstations are presently being upgraded to Windows 98 or 2000 depending on the machine specifications.  This is crucial in order to upgrade the Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition version 7.6 to version 8.0.

The following Hardware or Software were purchased:

                        1.         Windows 2000 Professional

2.         Windows XP Professional

3.         Norton Ghost 2003

4.         Five (5) APC Backup 500VA with replacement Battery

5.         Seven (7) IBM Netvista PC (PIV, 2.4GHz, 40GB, 256RAM, windows XP)

6.            Memory Upgrade for Network Server (512RAM)

7.            Eleven (11) 128RAM and 40GB Hard Disks for IBM PCs

Eight officers completed training at local institutions.  The trainings were as follows:

1.         One officer in MS Access 97 Database Application Design at College of    Bahamas CEES programme

2.            Two officers in HTML programming

3.            Five officers in MOUS Certification

4.            Five officers in A+ certification

UNSD Technical Assistance

Mr. Phan T. Pham, Informatics Advisor, (The United Nations Statistics Division) visited on December 4 - 13, 2002 to give technical assistant in the following:

1.                  Network problems resolution

2.                  Database needs and development

All network problems were resolved and several recommendations implemented where possible.  Presently, research is in progress to investigate MS SQL Server (with the intention of purchasing the version that is suitable for the department’s database requirements) and also training in SQL and Visual Basic.

SOCIAL STATISTICS DIVISION

CENSUS AND SOCIAL STATISTICS

Census

The Administrative and Population Projection Reports from the 2000 Census are still pending, however, these reports should be completed by the end of November 2003.

Monographs

A series of monographs originating from the 2000 census is presently being written by senior staff members from within the department and officers from other agencies.  Thus far, monographs that have been written and published are listed below.  The remainder will be completed in the year 2004.

                        Topics                                                             Status

                                                                                                       2003

                        Overview 2000 Census                                  Published (May)

                        The Challenges of Data Processing              Completed (July)

                        Housing                                                          Completed (September)

                        Population Projections                                   Pending (November)

                        Migration                                                       Pending (November)

                        The Disabled                                                  Pending (November)

                                                                                                             2004

                        Single Mothers: A Profile                                              "

                        Senior Citizens                                                                "

                        Youths                                                                  "

                        The Foreign Born Population                                         "

                        Family Membership                                                        "

                        Income                                                                             "

SOCIAL STATISTICS

The Bahamas In Figures, 2002 is completed and is presently at the publishers.  The Statistical Abstract is presently on hold, and is being looked at with a view to improving its format and contents.  The new and improved Statistical Abstract of The Bahamas should be available in 2004.

BAHAMAS LIVING CONDITIONS SURVEY 2001

This first time effort by the Department has experienced several setbacks; the most sobering and shocking one being the recent sudden death of the officer directly responsible for the project - Portia Johnson.

Up to her demise Ms. Johnson did an excellent job of cleaning up the data in preparation for the writing of the chapters.  She had the responsibility of drafting the chapter on poverty, which is one of the four chapters for which drafts have not yet been completed.

The report, which should be completed and published by the end of the first quarter of 2004, will contain the following:- 

                        Chapter           1.         Overview and Demography

2.            Poverty

3.            Expenditure

4.            Health

5.            Education

6.            Employment

7.            Access to Social Programmes and Community Service

8.            Housing

9.            Technical Appendix

To date draft chapters have been completed for Education, Employment, Access to Services and Housing.  Two of these chapters have been critiqued by a team of IDB consultants as well as the lead consultant, Jaiki Desai, employed by the Bahamas Government.  Those authors are in the process of producing their final version.

The four outstanding drafts should be completed by mid-November.  The writing of the Poverty chapter is now the responsibility of Ashu Handa of the IDB.

VITAL STATISTICS

The 2000 Vital Statistics Report has been published.  The 2001 Vital Statistics Report and the 1999-2001 Life-Table Report are expected to be published by the end of this year.  Some preparation was done for the Population Projections 2000-2030.

LABOUR MARKET INFORMATION UNIT

Labour Force

The preliminary results for the 2003 Labour Force and Household Income are available.

The full report is scheduled for completion by the end of the year.  The survey was conducted as customary during the month of May.  A new design is in place, which includes more Family Islands on a rotation basis.  The survey covered approximately 3,600 households in New Providence, Grand Bahama, Exuma and Eleuthera.

Labour Market

A Labour Market Information Newsletter is published bi-annually.  The latest published issue is June 2003.  The Newsletter contains data on The National Insurance Board Short Term Benefits, Results of National Standard Examination and other data pertaining to the Labour Market.

The latest published issue of Occupations and Salaries in the Hotel Industry is 1999.  An Occupational survey will be attempted for the third time.  This will be carried out in conjunction with the ILO under the Caribbean Labour Market Information System (CLMIS) project.

SOCIAL INDICATORS AND MILLENNIUM

DEVELOPMENT GOALS COMMITTEE (SIMDGC)

On May 12, 2003, Dr. Philomen Harrison and Mr. Sylvan Roberts of CARICOM Secretariat assisted in launching the inaugural meeting of the SIMDGC.

ECONOMIC STATISTICS DIVISION

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX

Information on the Consumer Price Index is available up to August 2003 for the island of New Providence and up to July 2003 for Grand Bahama and the All Bahamas Consumer Price Index.  There was no published Annual Review of Prices since the 1990 publication.  Subsequently, all efforts will be made within the next year to produce such a publication.

Price collection for the basket of goods and services for the Consumer Price Index is a monthly on-going process.  During the past year, plans were in progress to implement a new database structure in order to efficiently and effectively facilitate the processing and dissemination of data; however, this process proved unsuccessful.  Consequently, following the price collection, data is still processed and disseminated using Dbase III, Lotus and Word Perfect.

Quarterly Building Construction Materials Index information for New Providence and Grand Bahama is available up to March 2003.  The second quarter data is currently being processed.

FOREIGN TRADE SECTION

The staff of the Foreign Trade Section is presently involved in the detailed editing of the 2002 Trade Data.  It is expected that this exercise will be completed by the end of March 2004.  Bahamas Customs introduced HS 2002 on July 1, 2003.  Our task of assigning corresponding SITC codes has been completed.  Data entry of the 2^nd half of 2003 based on the revised nomenclatures are scheduled during November.

BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENT STATISTICS

The Business Establishment Section was scheduled to close fieldwork for the 2002 round of surveys in New Providence October 3, 2003.  However, due to the low response rates for a few sectors, personal visits and calls will continue through the first half of November.  The Grand Bahama 2002 surveys got off to a late start mainly due to lack of updated registers.  The 2002 survey round in both islands was a very difficult one for the Establishment Section in that establishments were not as co-operative as in previous years even though special efforts were made to win over their trust and co-operation.  The main reasons cited for lack of co-operation were respondent fatigue, confidentiality, relevance and non-interest.

The Section is currently involved in follow up calls, assisting establishments with filling out questionnaires, final edits, comparison, query clarification, and data entry.  To date in New Providence only the surveys of: Industry; Other Community, Social and Personal Services, Hotels; and Restaurants have response rates of fifty percent or higher.  It is intended that for the remaining part of the year, the Section’s primary focus will be that of updating the registers for the 2003 surveys and completion of the 1999-2002 estimates.

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS SECTION

Current Projects:

1.                  The National Accounts section is currently working on the current and constant price figures for 2001.  Revisions to the series back to 1989 continues.  Preliminary figures should be available by first week in November.  During the past year the production of timely estimates was again hampered by late submissions of information from data sources especially business establishment statistics which the production approach methodology depends heavily on.

2.                  GDP estimates for 2002 should be completed by December 2003 pending the response to the Business Establishment surveys and the availability of data from other sources.

3.         Projection of 2003 GDP figures will be considered during the first quarter of 2004.

4.         Research continues into the implementation of the Government and Rest of the World Accounts.

Future Projects

1.                  We hope to implement a methodology and tables for the Bahamas in the following areas in the not too distant future:

(a)        Tourism Satellite Account

            (b)        Informal Economy Survey

            (c)        Supply and Use Tables

2.                  SNA 1993: coverage of the other Institutional Sectors with special emphasis on the Balance Sheet items and the inclusion of the Non-profit Institutions Serving Households.

3.                  Environmental Accounts: we hope to develop these accounts starting with one Industry and working it through the system e.g. Fisheries, one of the areas where some data on stock and depletion is already available.

Technical Assistance

1.        During December 2002, a mission lead by Mr. Thomas Alexander from the International Monetary Fund was held with the Department of Statistics and the Ministry of Finance in an effort to assess the current status of the National Accounts prepared by the Department of Statistics in the Bahamas.

2.         A follow-up mission is scheduled for December 1^st - 12^th 2003 by the International Monetary Fund.  The purpose of this mission is to review the Department of Statistics National Accounts Methodology with a view to assisting the further development of the accounts.

WORK SCHEDULE 2004

The Department will take no new projects in 2004.  Instead, priority will be given to:-

1.                  Improving quality and timeliness of conventional series

2.                  Improving public relations in order to better educate users, and

3.                  To improve response rates giving assistance to partner agencies in the statistical system.

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