Research & Publications

Please be sure to review the associated Terms of Use. All queries related to CBBWEBSTATS should be sent to statistics@centralbank.org.bb.

The tables presently available are

1. Inflation and Retail Price Index (Tables I1, I2)
2. Index of Industrial Production (Tables I3, I4)
3. Labour Statistics (Tables I5)
4. Gross Domestic Product (Table 6)
5. The Wages Index (Table I7)

The Inflation Rate and Retail Price Index
The Retail Price Index (RPI) and the rate of inflation (12 point moving average) is sourced from the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) with a monthly frequency. The BSS periodically adjusts the base year, the weights and the categories. The following table shares a snapshot of the changes in weights, categories and base years since 1965. For more information click on Retail Price Index Changes

Index of Industrial Production (IIP)
The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) is sourced from the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) with a monthly frequency. The BSS periodically adjusts the base year, the weights and the categories.

Labour Statistics
Statistics on Barbados’ labour force is sourced from the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) with a quarterly frequency. One historical table was only available annually and one historical table was sourced from the Barbados Industrial Development Corporation/Barbados Investment & Development Corporation.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

The GDP of any country is essentially the total value of goods and services it provides within that country, typically within one year or within one quarter. GDP is a popular indicator used to track if an economy is growing or not, and is typically expressed in either real prices or in nominal prices. In the case of the former, the values are adjusted for differences in prices levels.

Historically, the Central Bank of Barbados (the Bank) provided annual and quarterly estimates of real GDP while the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) provided annual estimates of nominal GDP. However as noted in the Barbados Economic and Social Report 2015 (page 17, Box 3.1) and subsequently in the Bank's review of Barbados' economic performance in the first six months of 2018, Barbados revised the approach to estimating GDP.

In summary and in keeping with international conventional practice, the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) is now estimating both nominal and real GDP estimates (base year = 2010). The Bank has thus discontinued its previous generation real GDP estimates at 1974 prices. Each quarter the Bank however shares provisional estimates pending BSS’s official and more detailed release.

The Wages Index

As stated by Moore & Maynard (2004) “A wages index is normally employed to track changes -in the general level of the price of labour in an economy. It can be used as an indicator of variations in the standard of living of the labour force over time, and, given Barbados’ fixed exchange rate, provide an important barometer of the external competitiveness of the nation.”

The authors first introduced the new approach to update the discontinued wage index (formerly compiled by the Barbados Labour Department) in their paper entitled “Extrapolating the Discontinued Wages Index Using Data on Collective Wage Bargaining Agreements”^[1].

The discontinued wages index series, a Laspeyres Index, was an arithmetic mean of wages and salaries indices for hourly-paid skilled labourers in the sectors given in the below table, using a 40-hour week as the basis of calculation. Weights were based on the percentage of total employment provided by the sectors, where employment data was unavailable in the detail required the percentage contribution to GDP by the sector was used.