Dear Editor,
The last budget underlined the importance of using the country’s oil revenues to meet the basic needs of the population, including nutrition, the absence of hunger, good healthcare, and sound education and training opportunities. This is commendable. But what information do we have on these needs? How will we measure progress?
Currently the Statistical Bureau publishes data on employment, wages, and the labour market with a two-year lag, and has published data on nutrition through 2017. The Bureau also publishes periodic cluster surveys of the situation of women and children. In the annual budget documents for 2024, the Ministry of Health presented infant and maternal mortality estimates for 2023 as well as targets for 2024. Also, in education, the ministry produces an annual statistical bulletin that is available on its website.
However, there are no timely national statistics on poverty. This shortcoming is common in many other countries in the Caribbean and was the subject of a recent World Bank commentary. Poverty estimates for Guyana are sometimes made by the World Bank, IDB, and UNDP. But these are often dated and are not a substitute for the continuous work on measuring poverty that needs to be done by our domestic institutions.
Some national statistical institutes, including in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, publish on regular basis, estimates on poverty and extreme poverty by region, as well as on income inequality. However, similar statistics are not available in Guyana and the Caribbean.
To address this shortcoming the government should assign the same priority and resources to statistics on people as are given to data on trade or GDP. This will allow regular annual reporting on progress in tackling poverty, hunger, healthcare, education, and overall wellbeing. Without timely statistics on these subjects, we will not really know how oil revenues are affecting the population.
Sincerely,
Michael DaCosta
