The Vanuatu National Statistics Office, Ministry of Finance & Economic Management (MFEM) is seeking to recruit a qualified Economic Statistics Advisor (the “Advisor”) to assist the office in providing technical assistance to support the process of rebasing the National Accounts and Consumer Price Index (CPI) base year prices from 2006 to 2019 prices. It is an intensive exercise which would require quite a considerable amount of time on data cleaning, reclassification and reconciliation for the historical series where reliable data are available. This exercise will also form part of the National Sustainable Development Plan (NSDP) in improving the public performance, governance and social well-being of the country’s citizens.
More information is provided in the Terms of Reference (ToR) as attached.
ORGANISATION CONTEXT
The mission statement of the Vanuatu National Statistics office (VNSO) is to provide quality and timely information through the collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of official statistical information which are recognised and respected by the Government, international institution, and the general public. VNSO is committed to providing high quality, reliable and timely statistics that are always demanded for development plans. The statistics Department collect data for most sectors within Vanuatu National Statistical system. They then produce statistics to be used for policy & decision making processes, by individual sectors or Government.
The Statistics Department is comprised of 5 main sections; administration, economic, social & environment, statistical leadership & coordination (Census and Survey unit) and data collection. Within each section there are a number of units. The Economic Statistics section comprises of Trade, Tourism, Prices, GFS, Production and National Accounts units. This position will be working within the Economic section.
HISTORY
The Statistics Department has usually had short term technical assistance from PFTAC which is maximum of 10 days within 12 months’ period. These missions address only the short term priority needs which includes reviewing the latest GDP figures and advise on source data as alternative to the missing components. Therefore, major undertaking like rebasing and incorporating new data source into the framework, updating new data sources from economic survey or census and reviewing the structure of the economy is unlikely to be solved within these short term missions.
In the early 80’s the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has provided advisory support to VNSO through technical assistance. VNSO has made good progress over those years prior to that program and progress further after additional technical support. It has been seen as a footprint in establishment of National Accounts framework where GDP Production series has been compiled from 1987 going forward and historical series to 1983.
MAIN ACTIVITIES
The major function of the Statistics Department include: