The international financial crises of the mid and late 1990s underscored the fact that globalization had put a premium on the availability of timely, reliable and comprehensive data. Unfortunately, many developing countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, have not addressed these critical statistical requirements in a systematic way.
While good official statistics are a valuable public resource in any national context, their role in guiding the formulation of public policy gives them an even greater importance in developing countries, where the impact of public policy decisions tends to be amplified in the presence of large economic and social imbalances.