OECS Member States Approve the Draft OECS
Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS)
OECS Member States approved the draft OECS Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS) at a regional meeting of stakeholders in Barbados on 17 and 18 October, 2016.
The RSDS satisfies the provisions for availability of and access to comparable statistics as stated in the Revised Treaty of Basseterre. It accommodates national development plans, OECS sector strategies, such as the Education Strategy, Tourism Policy, and aligns with the CARICIOM Action Plan for Statistics, the CARICOM Regional Statistics Work Programme; and global initiatives such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the SIDS Accelerated Modalities for Action (SAMOA) Pathway and several other thematic areas such as youth, persons with disabilities, child protection, and women.
The OECS RSDS is a 14-year master plan to support the production and dissemination of economic, business, social, demographic,
environment and energy statistics for use in national development planning, to monitor progress toward full integration of the OECS Economic Union and to measure attainment of the SDGs.
The OECS RSDS 2017 to 2030 is expected to be endorsed by OECS Economic Affairs Council in November 2016.
Participants at the meeting included Member States’ national statistics office and policy unit; institutional partners ECCB and UWI, and development partners such as ILO, UNWOMEN, UNICEF, UNDP, World Bank, FAO, UNFPA and PARIS21.
The development of the OECS RSDS was funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) with project management responsibility assigned to the World Bank and implementation support by UNDP and World Bank.