CARIBBEAN                       COMMUNITY                           SECRETARIAT

            TWENTY-EIGHTH MEETING OF THE                            RESTRICTED

            STANDING COMMITTEE OF

            CARIBBEAN STATISTICIANS                                         SCCS/2003/28/26

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands                             

            3 - 5 November 2003                                                          3 November 2003

PROGRESS REPORT AND PROPOSED WORK PLAN

 STATISTICS UNIT, ST. KITTS AND NEVIS

INTRODUCTION

This report reviews the work program of the Statistical Unit, a division in the Planning Unit of the Ministry of Finance, Development and Planning, St. Kitts and Nevis.  It covers the period November 2002 to October 2003. Additionally the report provides a summary of activities scheduled for 2004. Despite the significant reduction in budget for the 2003 period the Unit was able to undertake most of the tasks outlined in its work program. However, the Unit remains constrained by the lack of space and other resources.

STAFFING AND STRUCTURE

2.         There are fifteen (15) positions within the Statistical Unit.  At present there are 17 persons employed in the Unit.  Of these, 14 are permanent staff, two temporary and one contract officer. The request to employ another Statistician has not come to fruition. Though one must admit that it has become increasingly more difficult to hire persons trained in Statistics. One senior member of staff, Mrs. Henry, Statistician 1 retired during 2003.  This was to our loss since she was proactive in her efforts to ensure that the process of implementing some components of SNA 93 was in place. She has since returned to do a short-term stint in the area of National Accounts.

Meetings/Training/Workshops and Seminars

3.         During the period under review, several officers were able to attend several meetings and workshops. Staff members benefited from the following:

2003

Jan 23-24                  Multi Donor Initiative to Support the collection of social data for poverty assessment and reduction.

Mar17-Apr25             IMF Balance of Payments workshop, one officer

April 01                       Workshop to establish the SIMDG Committee

Jul 7-8^th                     Conference on the Promotion of Sustainable Human Development goals through implementation of the MDGs, one officer

Aug19-25                   ILO Labour Force Workshop, one officer

Oct 20^th                      Meeting of Directors of Statistics, Grenada

Oct 21-24                   Workshop for post scanning of Census Data, one officer.

Oct 21-23                   Workshop on Satellite Accounting Systems, one officer.

4.         In general, the training obtained was beneficial to the officers and the unit. However, there is need for greater training opportunities for the staff at the lower levels.

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX

5.         The new CPI was launched on St. Kitts on October 15^th 2001. The old and new CPI’s were run concurrently for several months. Currently only the new CPI is produced on a monthly basis. With some assistance from Mr. Murad of Cartac, some of the previous years were rebased. However, it should be pointed out that the new items varied considerably to those in the old basket.  Additionally three new sections had been added. 

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS AND BALANCE OF PAYMENTS

6.         These continue to be compiled on schedule with some assistance from the Central Bank. Basic tables are compiled on GDP activity in current and constant prices, expenditure on the GDP in current prices and National Accounts Aggregates.  With some support from CARTAC, through the assistance of Ms. Marshall efforts are ongoing to implement some components of SNA93. In this regard the consultant made an initial visit during the week of February 23 to March 01, 2003.  A follow up visit was made during the period March 30 to April 5^th. The National Accounts questionnaires were redesigned to encompass the more detailed information required.  A comprehensive Business Register is also being prepared and from this we should be able to obtain the core goods and services to be used in the SUT. 

TOURISM

7.         In 2002 I indicated that a new system for the processing and management of the tourism information was introduced in 2001. (Management Information System for Tourism, MIST)  The expectation was that this new system would not only speed up data input and with a greater level of accuracy but would also offer other options which will facilitate the accessing of additional information. Unfortunately, this expectation has not been realized. Rather as more and more programming errors came to the forefront, coupled with other internal problems, a decision was made by the Tourism Authority to quit using the program after the half year 2002 was completed. Unfortunately, we do not have any tourism data from July 2002 to present.  We have been depending on the Ministry of National Security to provide us with the tourism data that was previously obtained from the Tourism Authority. It must be pointed out here that, the Department of Tourism was responsible for keying the information from the ED cards; the data files were then transferred to Statistics for processing and analysis. There are still some very real issues that need to be ironed out regarding the sharing of information with National Security. If indeed, we are to depend on National Security to provide tourism data, there will have to be some building of capacity to manage and efficiently process the data provided to Statistics.

EXTERNAL TRADE

8.         At present, external trade statistics are available up to August 2003. The 2002 trade data as well as the first two quarters have been sent to CARICOM.   We were able to satisfy all queries for trade data during the review period.   As the volume of merchandise trade continues to increase, a problem of capacity of the existing machines to store the data has become a serious issue, and is one that needs to be resolved as soon as possible. Meanwhile the unit continues to keypunch the trade data using Eurotrace since the Customs Department still has not been fully computerized to facilitate the use of ASYCUDA at all ports of entry.  Keypunching of the data by Customs would release the existing staff to other duties, since the concern then, in relation to the trade data would be mainly that of consistency checking.  One of the issues we face is the rapidity in which the tariffs are changed, CARICOM is usually quite helpful in sending the updated tariff, but more times than not it is in a word processing format, a database format should be considered for future tariffs.

DEMOGRAPHY & OTHER SOCIAL AND GENDER STATISTICS

9.         The Unit continued to collect and compile demographic information.  (This is published in a Demography Digest every two years.  This digest carries information on mortality, population growth, fertility rates, deaths, births etc.  Data on marriages and divorce are also contained within this publication.) The latest Demography Digest was published early this year.

10.       The Unit also through the assistance of CARICOM set up a Social Indicators Millennium Development Goals Committee. The primary objective is to strengthen the statistical offices capability to collect, compile, analyze, and disseminate reliable timely and relevant social and gender statistics on a sustained basis. At the same time ensuring that there is continuous evaluation of the achievements of the MDGs.  This required a large amount of data, some of which was unavailable. However, the exercise highlighted the need for better and more expansive data collection systems to be put in place, and an investment of resources if we are to effectively monitor development indicators. In 2004 we hope to publish a booklet 21 years of education to mark the 21^st anniversary of independence.  This may be seen as the start of a series of booklets relating to social indicators.

11.       Under the ILO's Caribbean Labour Market Information Systems (CLMIS) project, assistance was given to the Unit in developing and designing the  Labour Force Survey. (LFS).

SURVEYS

12.       No surveys were undertaken during the period under review.  However, we assisted the Water Department in developing a Survey Questionnaire and we also drafted a questionnaire in preparation for the 2004 Labour Force Survey.

POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUS

13.       Currently we are running the post scan final IMPS program on the St. Kitts data. The next phase will be that of tabulation. The Statistics office on Nevis acquired a scanner several months ago and scanning of the questionnaires begun during the last week of October. The start up phase is usually slow, but with time there should be some improvement.  Early in 2004 we should have combined totals for St. Kitts and Nevis.

PUBLICATIONS

• The Demography Digest 2002
• The Annual Digest of Statistics 2001
• The Statistical Review 2002.

14.       It must be pointed out, that despite the fact that a lot of the data has not been published in a hard format, most of the data we collect are quite current and available on demand.  Information is often distributed via diskettes or via the Internet to persons requesting the information.

Miscellaneous

15.       The Unit participated in the Planning Unit’s Open day in October. On display were a number of our publications and general information about the work of the Unit.

Statistics Division

October 28^th 2003

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