CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Aug 8, CMC – The St. Lucia-based Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission says it has completed the updated Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment (eCPA) project.
The Commission said that the project was completed in partnership with the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and that the two-year second phase of the eCPA project fulfilled the provisions of the OECS’ Revised Treaty of Basseterre, which created an economic union that facilitates social cohesion and economic development and builds resilience.
The project involved the ine English-speaking OECS member states, namely Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St.Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.
The OECS Commission said that the project underscores it dedication to comprehensively understanding and addressing the complex dimensions of poverty within the sub-grouping and that it does so by addressing poverty in an informed and targeted way through the collection of critical data and by using that evidence to develop, guide and shape impactful interventions.
“The eCPA remains the OECS Commission’s flagship program for generating harmonized monetary and multidimensional poverty, inequality, and vulnerability statistics across our member states,” said OECS Director General, Dr. Didacus Jules.
“Aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the project combines surveys, censuses, geospatial analysis, and institutional assessments to deliver data-driven insights for policy formulation and social protection targeting,” he told a two-day hybrid meeting on the project earlier this week.
The head of the Human and Social Division at the OECS Commission, Mrs. Sisera Simon, said the Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment represents a major advancement in how poverty is understood in the region.
“No longer are we relying solely on income measures. Through the use of Multidimensional Poverty Indicators (MPI), we now have a richer and more honest view of the challenges our people face — in education, health, housing, employment, and overall quality of life,” she added.
The CDB, which played a vital role in the success of the eCPA project, providing both funding and technical support as well as promoting the use of modern data collection methods, cutting-edge tools and capacity-building.
“This initiative reflects our dedication to evidence-based decision-making and aligns with CDB’s broader goal of reducing poverty and transforming lives, and supports the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its core pledge to leave no one behind,” said Christine Dawson, the acting director of CDB’s Economics Department.
The eCPA collected data through the Living Conditions and Household Budget Surveys, and the national availability of census data, from Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat and the British Virgin Islands.
The OECS Commission said that the use of participatory data collection processes ensured the voices of communities were heard and that the project also provided capacity-development training and workshops across the member states to strengthen national capacity to analyse poverty and accelerate the development of evidence-based interventions.
The two-day meeting focused on disseminating data and presenting detailed poverty and inequality profiles at both national and regional levels. Designed to be highly practical, it facilitated peer-to-peer learning, the sharing of best practices, and enhanced policymakers’ understanding of how to incorporate data and analysis into national development frameworks for targeted poverty interventions.
The eCPA was initially launched in 2016 to measure the multidimensional aspects of poverty and living conditions, but was impacted by COVID-19 during implementation.
“Building on its achievement, the updated eCPA was strategically recalibrated to ensure the attainment of meaningful results to address poverty, vulnerability and socio-economic disparities whilst prioritising data privacy and anonymisation,” the OECS Commission added.
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