As the Caribbean celebrates “Caribbean Statistics Day” on 15^th October 2009, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Secretariat along with its Member States joins the region in celebration of the first Caribbean Statistics Day, under the aptly adopted theme, “Better Statistics, Better Management, Better Development Outcomes”. 

In observance of Caribbean Statistics day, the Secretariat wishes to reaffirm its commitment to the statistical development of the OECS region as well as its encouragement of evidence-based decision making and policy formulation, and the continued collaboration with regional and international agencies/organization towards that objective. Furthermore, the Secretariat wishes to announce some of its ongoing and planned statistics initiatives which are intended to contribute to the statistical development of its Member States. These initiatives include the following among others:

• The World Bank Trust Fund financed Project for Statistical Capacity Building, “Statistical Development for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Sub-region”
• The OECS adaptation of DevInfo, i.e. OECSInfo
• The OECS Labour Market Information Systems (LMIS) Programme
• The CDB/IDB financed “OECS Technical Cooperation Project”
• The establishment of an OECS Trade Policy Information System
• The Harmonization of the OECS 2010 Census instrument

Programme Officer, Sean Mathurin describes the inaugural occasion as a wonderful opportunity to further promote the relevance of Statistics to the development of the region.“In the region constant importance isn’t being placed on statistics as should be the case. What normally takes place is that importance is placed on statistics when it pertains to events such as censuses and parliamentary debates. Statistics has come to play an important role in almost every field of life and human activity, especially in this information age and we in the OECS region need to acknowledge this, particularly as the OECS moves towards an Economic Union.”

The OECS Secretariat trusts that the first Caribbean Statistics Day will be an overwhelming success in so far as it focuses attention on the achievement of its objectives, i.e.:

• facilitate the placement of statistics high on the development agenda in countries;
• encourage and develop a culture of statistics among the population – respondents from households and businesses, users in the public and private sectors and in academic and other institutions, and schools and members of the media;
• foster increased collaboration with data producing/statistical units in line ministries and other agencies and departments of governments;
• sensitise and inform users, suppliers and producers of the importance of statistics in making informed policy decisions.
• Improved awareness of statistics at the national level and across the Region;
• The highlighting of information on and insights into the process of production of statistics;
• The promotion of the use of statistics in a wide variety of areas;
• Increased credibility in the statistics produced;
• Establishment of new partnerships in the development of statistics;
• The receiving of investment of resources to reposition and restructure necessary statistical agencies.