US$5 million loan will improve the country’s evidence based policy making
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a US$5 million loan, National Population and Housing Census and Household Budget Survey: Increasing Use of Basic Statistics, to increase and facilitate the use of the basic demographic, social, economic, and cultural information of the Republic of Suriname.
The main component of the project, nearly US$4 million, will be used to support the Government of Suriname’s implementation of the Eighth General Population and Housing Census in 2012 to update the national data from 2004. Based on the results, the General Bureau of Statistics (GBS) will carry out the Household Budget Survey in 2013-14 to update data on household expenditures, the labor force, and the basket of goods and services used to calculate the change in the Consumer Price Index.
The comprehensive information collected by the census and the household survey will allow the GBS to generate updated, reliable, and detailed data about the size, distribution, composition, income, and geographical movements of the population.
The data will be also used to cross-check the accuracy of the civil registry, particularly to determine if children born in the last 12 months have been registered.
In addition approximately US$1 million will be used to enhance the institutional capacity of the statistics bureau to facilitate accessibility to census and survey data on-line in a timely manner. This will enable policy makers and the private sector to use the information to make policy and investment decisions and to monitor program implementation.
“This project will provide the data that is essential for the effective planning and efficient implementation of policy in Suriname. By improving the reliability of data and accessibility to statistics, users will be able to make evidence-based decisions to assure sustainable development in Suriname,” said Janine Perfit and Mariko Russell, the co-leaders of the project team.
“The approval of this project is very timely since the development community is increasingly aware of the importance of statistics, as exemplified in the endorsement of the global action plan to enhance countries’ capacity for statistics-keeping at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan, Korea earlier this month,” added Perfit and Russell.
The IDB loan of US$5 million is a single currency facility with an interest rate based on Libor. It is for a term of 25 years and has a grace period of 5 years and a disbursement period of 5 years.