Bahamas News

A key detail emerged this week about the planned effort to determine and catalogue more comprehensive details about the pertinent economic developments in The Bahamas.

The Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance Zhivargo Laing disclosed that the budget proposed by the Ingraham administration makes provision for a $1.5 million allocation to finance the undertaking.

It was former prime minister Perry Christie who revealed early this year the intention to conduct the Economic Census for the first time in the country’s history. But the ousting of the PLP administration in the May 2 general election put an end to the former government’s spearheading of that initiative.

Minister Laing said in Parliament this week while delivering his contribution to the 2007/2008 budget that the Department of Statistics is to receive an allocation of $6,087,597, an increase of some $2,198,748 or 56.5%. A portion of the increase includes the $1.5 million for the Economic Census.

“[The census] would provide the kind of comprehensive establishment information to facilitate the creation of a national business register and assist in creating appropriate models for future annual sampling and surveying of the business sector,” he explained.

“This will enable us going forward to capture much better data about the commercial sectors of The Bahamian economy and therefore provide better quality data for national accounts.”

Additionally the effort is designed to also facilitate the collection of industry data from the Family Islands, most of which have not been surveyed before.

Director of the Department of Statistics Charles Stuart said in an earlier Bahama Journal interview that the economic census is a strategic element in the evaluation of national business structure and activity.

“It is basically essential for the production of national accounts estimates where we compile information on the GNP [Gross National Product] and the GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. One of the main reasons for the census is also to use it as a means of development of annual household surveys.”

Such a mammoth effort involving the collection of strategic data from businesses in various sectors all around New Providence and the Family Islands would involve substantial amounts of resources.

Mr. Stuart admitted that the process would indeed be challenging.

“An economic census is a very difficult census to do,” said Mr. Stuart. “In fact I do not think there is any country in the region that attempted to do an economic census the way we are trying to do it…[getting information] from all of the industries. What they would do is conduct censuses over a period of time, so they would collect data on the wholesale and retail sectors this year and another census on another sector in another year.”

The Department of Statistics intends to complete its census in a singular effort, according to Mr. Stuart, who conceded that it would require significant amounts of funding, employees, training and expertise in interacting with the business community.

Officials plan to request information on various elements of business operations like employee volumes; wages; hours worked; expenditure, revenue; acquisition of capital goods and commodities.

The intricacies of the census are still being fine-tuned. The department intends to make optimal use of strategic entities that could also provide crucial data of areas like fisheries, the wholesale and retail sectors and financial services.

Originally, Mr. Christie had intended for the census to be undertaken later this year. There has been no new indication about a potential change in that schedule.

Minister Laing acknolwedged that the Department of Statistics continues to offer critical services to the country in the preparation and publishing of national statistics across a wide range of social and economic activities.

“It is my anticipation that it will do even more in the years to come,” he said.

“It was in fact the IDB assisted Living Conditions Survey 2001, sometimes referred to as the Poverty Study, conducted by the Department of Statistics that has contributed to the provision in the 2007/2008 budget of $3 million toward poverty alleviation.”

He added that a number of recommendations arising out of that study will lead to programmes generated by the Department of Social Services that will provide relief to the poor among us, many of whom are our nation’s children. The programmes are intended to be aimed at addressing the immediate needs of the persons affected while simultaneously seeking to move them out of their impoverished state.

By Tameka Lundy
The Bahama Journal