OECS Secretariat, Castries St. Lucia August 31st, 2009: The (OECS) Secretariat and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) have signed a grant agreement to support efforts of the OECS Secretariat and Member States to strengthen statistical capacity in the sub-region. 

Sean Mathurin, an Economic Affairs Officer at the OECS Secretariat says the project aims to contribute to regional statistical development by helping the OECS Secretariat introduce strategic approaches to the process of collection, compilation, and dissemination of social statistics with the funding provided for undertaking: (i) preparation and adoption of a regional strategy for development of social sector data strategies, (ii) strengthening the institutional capability of the OECS Secretariat for statistics and research, and (iii) specific development activities for priority areas of statistics: “Given the perennial dearth of statistics that exist in the sub region, there has been continual requests to address not just the social sector data needs but a wide array of other sector data needs of the sub-region. The project will facilitate some training in the form of workshops involving Central Statistical Offices in the OECS as well as social sector line Ministries such as Ministries of Education and Social Development.”

Execution of the project is expected to commence with the implementation of one of the Components, Institutional Strengthening of OECS Secretariat (Technical assistance for establishment of the OECS Statistics and Research Unit).This component will support the ongoing Institutional Strengthening initiatives of the Secretariat, as the OECS moves towards an Economic Union and enhances its capacity to effectively achieve objectives and sufficiently perform its role on behalf of its Member States: “The project will assist in a compilation of Social Sector statistics that will essentially support and monitor the OECS Economic Union. One of the critical statistics that would have to be produced has to do with the movement of persons within the OECS Economic Union. The project will speak specifically to social statistics, such as eductaion, youth related statistics, crime, etc. Matters pertaining to poverty rates among the respective OECS Member States, Crime Statistics and Education Statistics are also part of the project.”- Mathurin

Central to the effective functioning and realization of the OECS Economic Union and its stipulated provisions, is the availability and dissemination of comparable, complete, relevant, timely, reliable and accurate statistical data. The project builds on the recent experiences of development cooperation with the OECS Secretariat and the lessons from the IDF grant for the Surveys of Living Conditions (MECOVI) for the sub-region.