The Institute National Statistics of Timor-Leste (INETL) officially launching of six thematic reports of Census 2022 to public

Dili, May 14, 2024 – The Minister of Finance, the Institute National of Statistics Timor-Leste and the United Nations, on Tuesday officially launching six thematic reports such as: population projection, fertility, mortality, migration, education and evaluation of age and sex data.

The Minister of Finance Mrs. Santina J.R.F Viegas Cardoso on her speech said that, she stands proud of INETL for leading the analysis of 2022 Population and Housing Census data to give us further insights in the thematic areas of fertility, mortality, migration and education in the country.

The finance minister stated that the government takes seriously the importance of data in development planning. Timor-Leste made a political commitment to implement the Global Agenda of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), therefore these reports have come out at the opportune time with indicators that will measure the progress made. This data will also give provide the progress in implementation of the National Strategic Development plan (NSD 2011- 2030 but also the various sectoral strategic plans for Health and Education.

In this occasion the member of the government of Timor-Leste Mrs. Santina Cardoso and the officer in charge of the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Timor-Leste, Mr. Bilal Aurang Zeb Durrani shared the same idea by saying that, the maternal health is one of the priority health programs in the country. As fertility continues to decline from an average of 4.5 children per woman in her lifetime in 2015 to 3.6 children per woman, the number of recent births is also declining among women at all ages. The Government has made a lot of investment in the health sector to provide sexual and reproductive health services. Ministry of Health and its partners will be able to review the plans using the indicators that have been presented for each municipality.

The Minister of Finance Mrs. Santina Cardoso further said that, she is glad that the education thematic reportprovides the information of children that were in school in 2022. The data provides insight into possible disruption of school attendance during the COVID pandemic as shown by the education data. About one in four children age between 6-11 that were out of school in 2022, which is quite high. However, it is great to see progress made in increasing school attendance among girls age between 3 and 34 years which is now at 50 %, surpassing that of boys attending school.

Mrs. Santina Cardoso by stating that the analysis further shows that the literacy rate has now reached 71% The literacy rate among young people is at 87%, an improvement from the last census findings. There is however need to close the gap between some vulnerable groups. For example, among persons with disabilities, only 24% are able to read and write compared to 71% for persons without disabilities.

The migration reportshows that Dili continues to attract residents from other municipalities especially from Baucau and Viqueque, Bobonaro, Ermera, and Viqueque. This has implications for planning for hospitals, schools and housing in Dili inorder to ease the pressure from the migrant population coming into Dili, added by Mrs. Santina Cardoso and Mr. Bilal Durrani in the Auditorium Hall at Ministry of Finance.

The Minister of Finance Mrs. Santina Cardoso also said, she is very pleased to hear the work on census thematic analysis is still continuing in the areas of disability, the labour force, youths, housing conditions among others. It is my hope that the analysis will be completed in a timely manner, so that policy makers and planners are able to make informed decisions using data that is up-to-date. 

In this event the Minister of Finance and the OIC of UN Resident Coordinator in Timor-Leste would like once again to sincerely thank INETL for the commendable work under the leadership of the President of INETL present here.

The Excellency Minister of Finance and OIC of UN would also like to thank allour development partners for supporting the thematic analysis of the 2022 census. I would like particularly thank UNFPA for taking lead in supporting the census analysis both technically and financially; UNICEF for supporting the education thematic analysis. I would urge the other partners present here to support the thematic analysis, so that data from the census data can continue to inform us.

In the same event the President of the Institute National of Statistics Timor-Leste (INETL, I.P.) Mr. Elias dos Santos Ferreira said that now we are launching six thematic reports and the five thematic reports likes; Housing Characteristics and Amenities, Youth, Gender, Disability, Labour Force and census Atlas are still on process, and we hope that that report also can be share with government and other entity as soon as possible. The Population and Housing Census Timor-Leste 2022 product that still needed to launch in coming months is “Sensu Fó Fila Fali” or Census Retuning back the result reports to each sucos in Timor-Leste.

Finally, Mrs. Cardoso would like to urge all the government ministries, departments, municipality administrator offices and all stakeholders to use this information contained in the census thematic reports for development planning in the various sectors.

Ends.