Long overdue quarterly statistics were released by Government yesterday in a new format ? but only give a fraction of the information that has been released previously.

But Government said that all the information previously available in the Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics can still be obtained for free in a separate tabulation set.

And the Department of Statistics hopes to be able to have all of the information made available online when the new Government Internet portal is up and running.

Government fell behind in its release of the Bermuda Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics last year.

Historically, the figures were released every three months ? but until yesterday the last time Government revealed the figures to the public was last spring, when it issued data for the fourth quarter of 2002.

The new quarterly report has been shaved down to include only seven of what was once 18 statistical categories.in an article earlier this week, said the Government-issued statistics were likely to come out this week. Government was accused last month of breaking a promise to update and publish its statistics by the end of the year. The void in information meant no economic data for 2003 was available.

The new Quarterly Bulletin contains information on air and visitor arrivals, spending and choice of accommodation, retail spending and overseas spending by returning residents and construction.

The old Quarterly Bulletin also included information on Government revenue and spending, inflation, new company formations, additions to the housing stock, employment, employment income, imports and the combined balance sheets of Bermuda?s banks and deposit companies. Yesterday, Chief Statistician Valerie Robinson-James said the reason for the new format was to make the Bulletin more reader-friendly. And she said all the tables previously available could be obtained from the Department of Statistics as a tabulation set.

?What we are trying to do is to increase our readership with regard to the use of the information,? she said. ?We recognised that a lot of the information was not in high demand.

?We did receive a lot of requests for information on visitor spending and overseas spending and we decided to give our readers more information on those areas and bring the document into line with our other publications such as the Employment Briefs (which replaced the Employment Survey).?

She said that the new Bulletin includes more analysis of the statistics than the old Bulletin, including more explanation of changes in tourism arrivals, and on trends in the construction industry.

?When readers see a lot of numbers that can turn them off,? she said. ?But where there are significant changes in an area like additions to residential units, imports or employment in the hotel industry, then we would highlight it through a four-year time series.

?But data users such as the media who want to do more in-depth research can ask for a tabulation set which is available free of charge and would include all the tables that were published before but are not available in the Quarterly Bulletin.?

She said the Department currently mails out 200 Quarterly Bulletins and is working on having the Bulletin, the tabulations and ?most of our other publications? available online on the new Government portal.

The delay in the release of the data was met with disapproval by the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce, saying business relied on this information for forward planning.

Chamber chairman Charles Gosling said: ?One of the concerns of the Chamber with the introduction of the Statistics Act was that Bermuda businesses would spend a significant amount of time compiling information which they would then have to spend a lot of time retrieving in some timely and useful format.

?While we do accept that Bermuda business has been very reluctant to share numbers with anyone ? especially Government ? and the Statistics Act was created to bypass this reluctance, there were and are many different Departments collecting information with respect to their work (regulatory information, permits, licences, fees etc.) which is rarely compiled or released to the public in a manner to permit forward planning.?

Mr. Gosling said the Chamber would like to see Government bring back the ?Blue Book? (The Bermuda Digest of Statistics) which was a mine of information regarding Population, Education, Imports, Labour, Law etc.

?This was a blow to business planning 13 years ago when the decision was made to stop publishing this document,? he said.

?We need to accept that times change and the methods of collecting and disseminating information are completely different today compared to 1990 as is the information the modern market requires. While we were reliant on paper then, today Internet and e-mail provide more efficient methods of communication and publication.?

Mr. Gosling called for action to be taken by Premier Alex Scott to ensure that data was never again left this long before being released: ?We should receive this 3rd Quarter 2003 Bulletin in Jan 2004 as a wake-up call and one where we should encourage the Premier to create a committee with an extremely limited lifespan, consisting of public and private Sector members with a mandate to provide him with a resource list of statistics to be published on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annual basis which would help us to collectively reach those sound business decisions and good governance.?

He continued: ?This would achieve the transparency he wishes to demonstrate and remove the political nature of a set of numbers which document the health of Bermuda and its economy. Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons, who has also critical of Government?s failure to release the 2003 figures on a quarterly basis, said: ?We have had a lot of promises about openness, but the dissemination of information about the economy and Government finance information just seems to be getting worse.?

Dr. Gibbons said that if the Government wanted to change the format of the document, they could have continued to publish the data as they received it, and when the new format was ready, publish it.