Darbasie: It’s imperative to improve CSO

“I was very happy to see a focus on the statistical review in this budget. I hope it’s more than legislation.

We all heard him clearly say in the budget that because of the retagging of the gross domestic product number, GDP went from $165 billion to $145 billion. As people who manage companies when you have retagging of that order it’s almost impossible to achieve goals because at the end of the day your target is shifting so you really need to have the statistical office up and running as much as the RA at this point in time. Data is critical for us as a country going forward,” Darbasie said.

She was speaking as part of a panel exploring the Budget at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Trinidad & Tobago’s (ICATT) annual conference at the Hyatt Regency (Trinidad) in Port of Spain yesterday.

The Minister has set himself specific targets, Darbasie said, and those targets need to be monitored and measured so the country can really focus on growing the non-energy revenue.

“How do we monitor the performance of a government and country? We monitor by macroeconomic statistics.

One of the points that has been shouted out over the years is the lack of timely credible information out of the central statistical body. We are setting ourselves goals and we want to achieve those goals in a three or four year timeframe but in order to achieve those goals we need to have timely and reliable data,” she said.