The project focuses on the local needs to find solutions that are viable in the local context and that can be shared across the region. A first meeting was held in Grenada in April 2015 to introduce the project to all eligible member states, the CCS and the OECS and a large number of regional and international stakeholders. As the Prime Minister of Grenada, Dr. The Right Honourable Keith C. Mitchell is a strong advocate for improved statistics in the region, the meeting was opened by the Honorable Minister Oliver Joseph, Minister for Economic Development, Trade, Planning and Cooperatives, Grenada. The meeting provided a good overview of the large number of needs for technical assistance in the member states, as well as valuable insights in terms of the national context, pressures and challenges faced by the different NSOs. It also emphasized the large number of regional initiatives and the need for PRASC to coordinate its activities with other statistical capacity building projects.
Information gathered at the Grenada meeting and through questionnaires filled by each NSO enabled the project team to develop a Project Implementation Plan and the first Annual Work plan to present at the annual Project Steering Committee, held in July 2015. Members of the Project Steering Committee include the CARICOM Secretariat (CCS), the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Commission (OECS), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and two representatives from member states attending on a rotation basis. The Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC) also attended the meeting as an observer.
With the project strategy having been approved by the Project Steering Committee, the project team is now in the process of finalizing a framework for technical assistance with the member states. A meeting was held in Ottawa from September 21st to September 24th to confirm the 7 year plan with each member state and to develop project charters.
A total of 23 project charters for different sub-projects across all four project components were finalized and several activities for these projects will be starting in October. Many more project charters are in the process of being finalized.
While the project dedicated time to the planning of its activities in the last few months, some technical assistance activities have already started. For example, the project team has been working with the Statistical Institute of Belize on a Business Establishment Survey. Progress has been made on the Business Register, as well as establishing data needs by constructing the structure of the Supply Use table, preparing a sampling strategy and finalizing the questionnaire content. Work will continue on finalizing the collection strategy and developing the processing tools as collection is scheduled for early 2016.
Specifically within the OECS community, the project has been working with St-Lucia on the development of a model for a Business Register and with Montserrat to start reviewing a prototype for a new website.
With the project charters completed in September, many more activities will be carried out with member states of the OECS in the upcoming months. The project will work with Grenada on compilation of a quarterly Gross Domestic Product, with St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines on data analysis, and with Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat and St. Kitts and Nevis on a needs analysis for a website, to name a few.
The PRASC team is looking forward to working with the member states and progress on the project will be shared regularly in future newsletters.