Repercussions from inaccurate gas production estimates may be felt well beyond the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which reportedly lowered its projections of economic growth for the country on the basis of that flawed data.
The Ministry of Energy is taking a hit for releasing figures which, according to the Ministry of Finance, “bore no relationship to the actual production figures” for this year.
While the misinformation will be corrected when IMF officials visit the country within the next two months for their annual Article 4 consultation, damage has already been done and cleaning up the mess won’t be easy. Bad data can lead to bad analysis, which can lead to bad decisions and even worse results.
Timely and sound data are of critical importance to policy makers, the business community, consumers and investors, as it helps them assess how well the economy is performing and guides decision-making. If information is incorrect, the resulting policies and programmes will be completely off the mark. It is indeed worrying that indicators for one of the country’s critical revenue earning sectors—indicators which are vital for taking corrective measures when needed—are totally inaccurate.
If agencies other than the IMF were supplied with that wrong data, we will be hearing more about this blunder in the weeks and months to come.
Destructive actions, reactions
For a family in central Trinidad, the struggle to recover from a particularly traumatic experience has been made more difficult by a series of social media postings about the incident.
While the public outrage is to be expected, it is quite another thing for very personal details and images to be leaked online, exposing all the people involved in unimaginable pain and embarrassment.
As much as it might be a major talking point which is sure to attract a great deal of interest, the gruesome photos shown of the victim of that horrible attack are not only an invasion of her privacy, but adds to the physical and emotional pain she has already endured. There is also the matter of violating the rights of the minor at the centre of this regrettable incident.
It was bad enough that such an incident occurred but some of the public reactions and actions since then only make matters worse.
We are the champions
With a decisive 3-1 victory over Guyana on Sunday, T&T’s women are the winners of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Women’s Challenge Series. Congratulations to our soccer stars.
