By Delvardo Emmanuel
Journal Staff Writer
The Bahamas National Statistical Institute (BNSI) aims to address data gaps within
its system.
BNSI Managing Director Nerissa Gibson provided an update on the sideline
following, the opening ceremony of the Standing Committee of Caribbean
Statisticians meeting.
While speaking with reporters, she identified two main categories in which the
institution lacks information: the environmental sector and supporting population
information, adding the need to revise the way of information gathering in the
future.
“We also would have hosted some meetings on environmental, you know, for our
country. Our prime minister has been pushing and leading the initiative globally as
it relates to environmental statistics and carbon footprints and all of those kinds of
things,” Gibson said.
“We have a dearth of information for environmental statistics. We really have data
gaps because we have a number of agencies that have to get that information and
for us, we have to pull it all together to make sense for the government.
“More and more we need to be able to provide more information on our
population. I’m sure you would all know, and what I’ve heard about the challenges
that we would have had in conducting our census of population in 2022. And so,
we’re going to have to look for ways to maybe do census in the next couple of
years.”
She added, “The challenge is going to get worse, and so we need to find ways that
we can support the way that we conduct censuses.”
A national census is conducted every 10 years. The most recent was conducted in
- However, Ms. Gibson said this is something government is looking to
change.
“More and more, the government is making demands on us. And so, what the
government has been asking us to do, as an institute, is to provide data. In the past,
we would have provided data annually,” Gibson said.
“We would have provided something semi-annually. Like, in the past, we would
have done labour force surveys twice a year and provide an unemployment rate
twice a year.
“Now, we’ve just recently embarked on a quarterly survey. It’s conducted monthly,
but we will be providing quarterly estimates. So, now the government will be able
to say, what is the unemployment rate in The Bahamas on a quarterly basis. We
have been conducting the monthly surveys, I think, for the past three months.
“We should be coming out with quarterly estimates in, I would say like in, early
December and then thereafter, we would be producing and publishing quarterly
unemployment rates.
“We’ve also been compiling quarterly GDP, but what we have been doing is
compiling it, but publishing it with our annual reports in the coming years or in the,
perhaps, by next year we would then be releasing it.”
To date, an unofficial count of the country’s population is currently just shy of
400,000 people.
According to Gibson, the final report is expected to be release before the end of
January 2024.
