Bicycles, canoes and outboard motors are all critical to collecting information in Solomon Islands, and they are central to the work of the Solomon Islands Statistics Office (SISO).

The Statistics Office was very pleased this week to receive equipment from the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) to help the Office collect data about life in Solomon Islands.

This useful equipment includes 19 computers and two vehicles, plus numerous canoes and motors, and motorbikes and bicycles for access to rural and remote communities.

It is part of a broader program of support to the Statistics Office under the Solomon Islands Statistics Development Project (SISDP) managed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and funded jointly by NZAID and AusAID through RAMSI. This program includes 18 months of technical assistance provided by RAMSI adviser, Willie Lahari, a senior statistician from Papua New Guinea.

The equipment will be used to gather and report important national economic and social statistics including the Consumer Price Index, international trade statistics, business performance, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), visitor arrival numbers and other core official statistics. It will allow important field work to be undertaken to collect data for future national surveys including a Demographic and Health Survey to be fielded in November, a sample Gender Based Violence Survey proposed for next year, and a Village Resource Survey in early 2008 – all of which will help towards providing relevant data, which is currently not available, to strengthen decision making, policy formulation and planning like the measurement and reporting of Millennium Development Goals. The Village Resource Survey will help in planning for the proposed 2009 National Census.

The equipment was used for the recent nation-wide Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) run by the Statistics Office. The results of this comprehensive survey will provide important information for policy makers and planners on how people spend their income. The HIES data would also assist in measuring the subsistence (non market) sector of the economy, provide data for the rebase of the CPI to strengthen inflationary & wage policy. The data would also be a core input to the compilation of national accounts data particularly the GDP and poverty. The SISO will release the broad results at the end of the month, and then begin an education program for a wide range of interest groups about how they can use the information.

Margie Lowe, NZAID Program Manager and Suzanne Bent, AusAID First Secretary, officially handed over the equipment to the Government Statistician Nick Gagahe, and SISO Adviser, Mr Lahari.