Last week, the Irish Times quoted Jose Ramos-Horta as saying:

The country is very peaceful; common criminality is the lowest in the region; economically we are not doing too bad — growth last year was 14 per cent. Unemployment remains significant, but it has been reduced in the past few years through different schemes.

Ramos-Horta is on tour representing Timor-Leste, so you'd think it would be important for him to be on the ball. I'm told there isn't an official figure yet for 2009 growth and so it's unclear if there will be growth bigger than 2008's 12.8%. And yet some local media is also reporting that the finance ministry is saying the economy grew by 14%. This remains to be seen, by me at least.

There is an awful lot of confusion surrounding this issue. I for one am scratching my head.

And this is From the ADB on inflation in Timor-Leste:

Inflation has subsided at a much faster rate than forecast in ADO 2009, driven by sharp falls in international prices of food and fuel. (The use of the US dollar as the national currency has helped in this regard.) The consumer price index fell by 1.3% on a year-on-year basis in the second quarter of 2009. For the full year, inflation is now forecast at 1.5%, revised down sharply from ADO 2009, and for 2010 the forecast is lowered to 3.1%.

Some local media is reporting that inflation was a lot higher than that. There's much talk about all of these figures at the moment. Numbers tend to become fuzzy in Timor-Leste, but as we've seen, numbers are powerful weapons, especially when president's go out armed with them.