OPENING REMARKS BY AMBASSADOR LOLITA APPLEWHAITE, DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL, CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY (CAR

It is an honour to be here at the opening of the Thirty-fourth Meeting of the Standing Committee of Caribbean Statisticians (34th SCCS), the Seventeenth Meeting of the Regional Census Coordinating Committee (17th RCCC) and the Second Regional Statistical Research Seminar.

I bring you greetings on behalf of the Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, His Excellency Mr. Edwin Carrington who strongly supports and advocates for the development of the statistical infrastructure in the Region and the promotion of the use of statistics in every aspect of the operation of the Community. His support and interest were amply demonstrated in his address to the High-Level Advocacy Forum on Statistics in July 2009 in Trinidad and Tobago.

I wish to extend our appreciation to the Government and People of Saint Lucia for the excellent arrangements that have been made for the hosting of these meetings and for all the courtesies and the warm welcome that have been extended to us. These arrangements and the atmosphere of conviviality will ensure that our discussions over the next several days are carried out in a professional fashion.

I must thank in particular the Director of Statistics, Mr Edwin St Catherine and his focal point for these meetings, Ms Jacinta Francis, as well as the other staff members of the department, for their efforts in organising these meetings.

I understand that Saint Lucia last hosted this series of meetings about 10 years ago and I am pleased that the Government has agreed to be our host once again.

Since the last SCCS meeting in 2008, the global economic and financial crisis and price volatility in energy products have taken their toll on the Community.

The changes in the financial markets have affected economic activity worldwide with repercussions on the ability of the small economies of our Region to acquire the resources for their budgetary operations and ultimately to achieve their respective development goals.

The Region is still experiencing decline in economic activity due to the crisis. The heavy dependence on services, especially tourism, in many economies, has led to declines in government revenues, foreign exchange earnings, GDP and employment. Even before the impact of the crisis made itself felt, some of the countries of the Region were already adversely affected as a consequence of the changes in trading arrangements with respect to sugar and bananas.

Given the impact of the crisis in the USA, particularly with regard to increasing unemployment, the Region has also experienced declining remittances from abroad which affect the living conditions of the people of the Community who depend on this source of income. While a few countries worldwide are beginning to experience marginal increases in growth, others are still in decline and unemployment is still on the increase and at record levels in some countries.

In the above context, the openness of our economies and the vulnerability to other challenges such as climate change imply that there is need for urgent action to mobilise resources to avoid more extreme consequences across the Region that may lead to the turnaround of any advances in development that have been made.

It is acknowledged that timely, accurate, comparable and relevant statistics play a vital role in positioning the economies of the region on a growth path. The SCCS therefore has a significant role to play in promoting, and helping countries to strengthen, their statistical systems to produce and disseminate statistics to governments, researchers, the private sector and other users of statistics.

Further, promoting the use of these statistics through better discourse with stakeholders with regard to their meaning, interpretation and methods, could enable a solid basis for the development of proposals and synchronised actions that could aid in moving countries out of the decline. In addition, continued monitoring and evaluation of the state of our economies and creation of early warning signs are desirable outcomes with respect to the demands on the statistical systems.

This crisis therefore presents an opportunity for the SCCS to evaluate the current status of statistics in our countries, the challenges of producing statistics and the changes and innovations that are required relative to new statistical products; promotion of the development of existing systems of statistics; identifying of capacity constraints in National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and facilitation of increased South-South cooperation to alleviate the decreasing budgetary situations that most offices may now face. We should, therefore focus on coming out of this crisis strengthened and renewed.

The SCCS has already begun to play its part by seizing the opportunity to respond to the crisis. It had the foresight to establish years ago the mechanism of advisory group (now known as the Advisory Group on Statistics) to more effectively treat with statistical developmental issues and to bring these issues for consideration to the wider membership of the SCCS. The preparation of the Common Regional Statistical Work Programme and the Resolution which were respectively approved and passed by the Community Council of Ministers as early as 2005 formed the basis for decisive action by the SCCS to enable the development and implementation of a framework to improve and harmonise statistics across the Region.

Furthermore, the work put in place to identify Minimum Datasets/Indicators and Priority Activities and Indicators to be Encouraged in the production and dissemination of statistical activities across countries is yet another example that the Advisory Group on Statistics and the SCCS are moving in the right direction to provide a framework that can redound to the benefit of the development of the Region.

Finally, the SCCS is now reviewing its Terms of Reference and Rules and Procedures to enable greater effectiveness in its operation in the future, given the changes that have occurred since its establishment in the early 1970s. I congratulate the SCCS on these initiatives and urge you to build rapidly on them.

The SCCS must therefore, in its deliberations at this 34th meeting, continue its thrust of advancing the goal of guiding the development of high-quality systems of statistics in the Region that can concretely lead to the well-being of the Community. The hugely successful High Level Forum on Statistics held in July in Trinidad and Tobago, identified the need for a monitoring framework, and its formation perhaps should be one of the crucial developments to come out of the deliberations of this 34th SCCS Meeting.

The 17th Meeting of the Regional Census Coordinating Committee, which follows the SCCS, will focus on the concerns with respect to the conduct of the 2010 Round of Population and Housing Census in countries of the Region, with many countries scheduling this exercise either next year or in 2011.

The Census provides a seabed of information for socio-economic planning and development across a wide spectrum of areas. It provides major inputs into the national statistical systems; it enables the allocation of budgets across regions within countries; it provides information on human capital and the development needs of countries; it enables the dissemination of small area information for the provision of services such as schools and health facilities. In July this year, the Community Council of Ministers approved the establishment of the Regional Census Coordinating Committee and endorsed the Regional Strategy of Support to member states in the conduct of their census exercises. The Community Council also agreed to the provision, at the national level, of human and financial resources to statistical offices and departments on a timely basis for the conduct of the 2010 Census.

The CARICOM Secretariat has received financial support for census activities from international development partners including the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and UNICEF have also supported through the convening of training workshops on activities such as data editing, Mapping/GIS and data dissemination. It should also go on record that the EU has also been lending its support to the development of statistics in the Region. We extend our appreciation to all our international development partners for their continued support in the area of statistics, which is so crucial for the development of our Region.

Given the global crisis, the centrality of the SCCS as a forum must be underscored. The conduct of the High Level Forum, the first observance of Caribbean Statistics Day on 15 October, and the Second Regional Statistical Research Seminar provide a fitting backdrop for the future developments and innovations of the regional and national statistical systems.

I wish the SCCS, RCCC and the Regional Statistical Seminar very productive deliberations and discussions.

Thank you.