The Inter-American Development Bank today announced the approval of a US$550,000 grant for the statistics offices in the Caribbean to develop and adopt a common framework for carrying out population censuses.
The new project, approved by IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno under the Initiative for the Promotion of Regional Public Goods, will help develop a common questionnaire, common methodologies for data collection and validation and a common tool for data access and dissemination.
The project is a result of a joint effort of the statistics agencies of the 15 member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its secretariat to implement a 2005 decision of the Council of Ministers of CARICOM that mandates member states to coordinate their statistical work.
Regional cooperation and harmonization in the area of data collection, validation and dissemination is considered crucial to support the implementation of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). The CSME aims to create a seamless, Caribbean-wide economic space, liberalizing the movement of goods, services, capital and skilled professionals across the region.
The project will result in the use of a single core questionnaire for population censuses in all CARICOM member states; the standardization of data collection techniques; and full compatibility of information technology tools to facilitate region-wide access to statistical data.
The project will also enhance coordination among the statistics agencies on topics such as technical innovations for producing statistics. It will pave the way for the collection of population data that is fully comparable across countries, providing crucial input for the design of region-wide policies and programs to consolidate the integration process of the CSME.
The executing agency for this project is the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown, Guyana (http://www.caricom.org/jsp/secretariat/secretariat_index.jsp?menu=secretariat).
It is expected that the common census framework will be in place for the 2010 round of population censuses that will be held in all CARICOM member states.
Regional Public Goods
This project was selected from the second call for proposals of the Initiative for the Promotion of Regional Public Goods held in 2005. This innovative IDB instrument provides grants to groups of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that are willing to cooperate and conceive a regional solution to a problem with transnational effects or a problem that they have in common and that can better be solved collectively. Under this initiative countries cooperate to obtain benefits that they cannot achieve individually or to reach the benefits in a more efficient way.
At present, the initiative’s portfolio consists of 19 approved operations for a total of US$18.6 million in financing. The projects benefit all 26 IDB borrowing member countries, covering a broad array of sectors, including environment, education, agriculture and rural development, financial markets, health and natural disaster prevention.
The IDB is the first multilateral institution to finance operations that aim at the creation of regional public goods among its member countries.