The war of words between David Burt and Marico Thomas has laid bare a longstanding problem for Bermuda’s policyholders, which has prevented them from making good decisions about its future — the lack of timely and reliable statistics.

Mr Thomas, the president of the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce, and the Premier have tussled recently over whether chamber estimates of the scale of the housing crisis are reliable, with Mr Burt saying “guesses on figures do not make facts — end of story”.

Mr Burt has since backtracked on that statement, saying through a spokeswoman that he was talking generally about people using statistics based on guesswork — not the methodology used by the chamber.

In his speech in the House of Assembly, he said: “But you can’t say that we should give the public officers the tools, and when the tools are given to the public officers, and increased resources and technical assistance and all the rest, then you disagree with the result of what is produced by technical officers — you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.”

In fact, no one is suggesting that the statistics presented by the Government are incorrectly compiled or have not been developed using industry standards.

But it is possible to debate the statistics when they either appear not to square with the facts on the ground, when the methodology chosen appears to be limited, or when they are so produced so long after the fact that their usefulness is diminished.

One recent example of that, highlighted in the chamber’s presentation, concerned estimates of Bermuda’s population. The Government says it was 63,356 in 2023, based on the number of births and deaths that had occurred in the previous year.

The chamber has estimated that the population may in fact be much lower — between 54,651 and 56,667, based on its projections of economic persons and “estimated airport movement”.

The chamber estimate may indeed be wrong, but it has at least attempted to address the missing element in the government estimates — the effects of immigration and emigration on the population.

It is relatively easy to estimate the effect of immigration on the population based on how many work permits have been issued and how many dependents are attached to them. It is much harder to estimate emigration since there is no requirement for Bermudians to state when they are leaving the island permanently.

However, using airport movement as a basic estimate – essentially seeing how many Bermudians flew overseas in a given period and how many returned — is a means of making a reasonable estimate for this number. More than a guess.

The real problem is the lack of an up-to-date Census. The Census was supposed to take place every ten years and was a year late in 2016. Nine years later, its statistics, almost by definition, cannot be relied on for accurate numbers.

That is why many countries conduct a mini-census every five years, and the Government missed an opportunity to at least get the Census back on schedule by conducting it this year.

Nonetheless, the problem is not limited to the Census. When prices around the world spiked after the Covid-19 pandemic, many questioned the accuracy of our Consumer Price Index, which showed much lower estimates for inflation in Bermuda than were being recorded elsewhere.

More recently, as the chamber session showed, rents appear to have spiked, based on the prices being advertised by local realtors. Yet according to the January CPI report, rents were 2.1 per cent higher than a year earlier — that’s not nothing, but it does not seem to square with what renters are experiencing. It is of course true that many rents do not increase annually, but it is hard to believe that an apartment that was rented for a hypothetical $2,000 a month in January 2024 is now being advertised for $2,040 a month.

The other problem with statistics relates not to reliability but to frequency. That CPI report was for January and it is was released on June 2. Why does it take four months to compile the report? Americans received their CPI estimate for May at about the same time.

Similarly, the most recent gross domestic product report for Bermuda is for the fourth quarter of 2024, which is actually an improvement on past performance. But the annual GDP has yet to be released despite the assumption it should be relatively uncomplicated to establish.

It is hardly surprising that organisations will, in the absence of timely data from the Government, develop their own methods to get an accurate gauge on trends in the community.

The chamber, to its credit, appears to have taken an objective approach to developing robust estimates which will stand up to scrutiny. It deserves credit for its efforts to shed light on the economy and the housing market, not thinly veiled criticisms.