THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS of the Central Bank of Barbados should demand an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the bank’s removal of unemployment statistics from its website last Thursday, the same day they were put up.
The call was made on Sunday by Opposition Leader Owen Arthur when he addressed the monthly meeting of the St Philip West branch of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) at the Gordon Walters Primary School in St Patrick’s, Christ Church.
Statistics showing that Barbados’ unemployment level jumped to 12.1 per cent at the end of June, from ten per cent March 31 were removed from the website of the Central Bank in the evening, with a bank official, who requested anonymity, saying they had been posted “in error”.
Arthur said he understood why Government might be embarrassed by such statistics but he could not understand or appreciate what had been done by the bank in publishing data sent to it and then taking the information down.
He submitted that such action should not be allowed to die a natural death since people needed to be told about the prevailing state of unemployment in the country.
According to Arthur, nowadays the bank was too frequently “departing from the path of righteousness” to the extent that when controversial information from it was spotted and pointed out by the Opposition in one quarter, that data was not published in the following quarter.
The former prime minister said that in the past any document or information coming from the Central Bank was regarded as “gospel” but, regrettably, this was no longer the case.
Therefore he was urging its directors at their next meeting to call for an inquiry into the removal of the statistics from the website and the “departure from good governance”.
Arthur said that rather than removing unemployment statistics from its website, the Central Bank should be doing like United States President Barack Obama and produce an employment strategy and policy showing what must be done to make the Barbadian economy better.
The Central Bank must never be seen or treated as a political football as was the case with the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the Constituency Councils, the St Peter Member of Parliament warned.
He said he was therefore joining in the condemnation of the course of action upon which the Central Bank was presently embarked, since traditionally Barbados’ strength and stability had been based on the quality of its institutions.
He said that the bank had no role in compiling unemployment statistics, which by law was done by the Statistical Service.
He said that perhaps one of the greatest achievements of his administration had been its reduction of unemployment from the 24 per cent level which it found in 1994 to 6.7 per cent when the BLP left office in 2008.
(TS)
