Cuba's Bogus Statistics

BY: THE HILL


Throughout the year, there have been numerous stories filed by foreign news bureaus in Havana citing figures from Castro's National Statistics Office.

These stories, thereafter, get cited as factual information (without questioning the source) by newspapers throughout the world.

The problem is that these figures aren't reliable.

Of course, this is no secret to those that understand the machinations of totalitarian regimes.

But even the U.N. has finally stopped reproducing Castro's statistics due to their inaccuracy and unreliability.

Kudos to El Nuevo Herald (in Spanish) for writing a story on this issue last week.

However, this has been taking place under everyone's nose for a very long time.

Just think how many stories are floating around with Castro's bogus statistics.

According to IPS (back in January 2011):

Cuba Bumped from Human Development Index over Missing Data

When the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) formulates its annual Human Development Index (HDI), it uses several socioeconomic indicators - including life expectancy, gross national income and literacy - to rank member states and also measure quality of life in these countries.

But a nation widely singled out for its positive achievements in education, health care and life expectancy has been left out of the index, complains Ambassador Pedro Nunez Mosquera, Cuba's permanent representative to the United Nations [...]

Asked for a response, William Orme of the UNDP's Human Development Report Office told IPS that, "No one wants Cuba in the HDI more than we do."

"The index is our flagship product, and the goal is always for maximum inclusion," he said.

Explaining the lapse, Orme said Cuba was omitted from the 2010 HDI due to the absence of current internationally reported data for one of the three required indicators: health, education and income (which are used to calculate the composite HDI value, which in turn determines a country's HDI ranking.)

The missing indicator for Cuba was for income, he said, pointing out that there is no internationally reported figure for Cuba's Gross National Income adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (GNI-PPP): the figure used for all countries for the income component of the HDI, and which is normally provided by the World Bank and/or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Unofficial estimates of GNI-PPP, Orme said, were considered unreliable by the statisticians and economists at the Human Development Report Office, and the U.N. Statistical Commission has advised against the use of such imputed - as opposed to officially reported - figures as human development indicators for HDI calculation purposes.