Environmental Indicators to be Included in Future SIB Statistics

Diana Castillo-Trejo

Over the past several months, the S.I.B. has also been busy working with the Department of the Environment to produce what will be known as environmental statistics, which will be included in future publications.  The study is one of several activities that the autonomous body has been engaged with in 2018, aside from embarking upon a labour force survey, as well as a household budget survey in April and May, respectively.

Diana Castillo-Trejo, Deputy Director General, S.I.B.

“We had a very full schedule of events this year.  We conducted our Labor Force Survey in April and in May we conducted the first round of our household budget survey.  That survey still has one more round to go, it’s done over the period of twelve months and over four rounds.  So we conducted three rounds of that survey this year, in May, August and November.  That survey again was partially funded and supported by the Central Bank of Belize and we received a great deal of technical assistance from Statistics Canada in designing that survey, in designing the questionnaire, the methodology and their support will be ongoing in analysis of the data.  That survey is to be used to develop our update consumer price index basket which is very well overdue.  So we are very happy to be completing that activity early next year.  We also at this time are wrapping up a yearlong project that we had with the Department of the Environment where we provided some assistance to that agency and to other agencies that produce environmental statistics where we basically did an assessment of what data is available, what the gaps are and what’s the assistance needed for that particular sector and we are wrapping that up right now.  So the hope is that early next year we will have a first set of environmental indicators that can be published and these will be published annually.”