Formation of autonomous statistical body put off
By Sabihuddin Ghausi
KARACHI, April 25: Formation of an autonomous and professional statistical organisation has been put off for at least three years as government now plans to organise a countrywide population census in October next.
Inquiries made in Karachi and Islamabad revealed that initial paper-work for organising population census has begun and the Population Census Organisation has sought budgetary support from the government.
The Federal Bureau of Statistics is the only government organisation that came under attack from the military government soon after October 1999 takeover “for its inaccuracy in data and information gathering, processing and analysis’’ so much so that one of its survey reports on income and expenditure in 2002 was suppressed.
Several federal ministers, including Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, when he was finance minister, ridiculed the FBS for its data on international trade, poverty, prices and industrial production.
The State Bank of Pakistan, too, questioned the credibility of trade figures and industrial productions in many of its reports.
For the last several years, the government has announced plans to put in place a new autonomous and professional statistical organisation by merging three organisations – the Federal Bureau of Statistics, the Population Census Organisation (PCO) and the Agricultural Census Organisations (ACO) – that will have a corporate structure and will be independent of government pressures.
Official sources in Islamabad now say that preparations are afoot to organise population census in October 2008 which is exactly 10 years after the previous census in 1998.
Obviously, the census will be held after the general elections for national and provincial assemblies under the auspices of the governments to be set up on the basis of election results.
More than 530 population districts have been worked out and the PCO is expected to put in place an administrative structure to oversee enumeration and collection of the data and information from districts and samples to be drawn up.
After its gets budgetary support in next June, the PCO is expected to draw up a programme of training enumerators and statisticians at various levels.
The population census in Pakistan is a highly sensitive and politically explosive issue as resource distribution and job allocation to provinces is entirely based on population.
Even after associating army, as was done in 1998, the census and enumeration will take almost a year to complete. Then comes the stage of compiling survey reports and processing and analysing data. If everything goes normal, the population census will be completed by the year 2010.
“Population census and merger of three organisations and formation of a new statistical body can be taken up simultaneously,’’ a source in Islamabad said. But even then a new statistical organisation will not be formed before the year 2010. How professional and independent it would be known only after it starts functioning.
Formation of an independent and professional national statistical organisation necessitates the reorganisation of provincial statistical bureaus as international financial institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, want monitoring of the GDP and other indicators at provincial levels.
With devolution process gaining gradual momentum, there is a demand to monitor economic indicators even at the district level so that planning and development are based on more realistic calculations.
All governments in Pakistan—military or popularly elected political—have been accused of manipulating information and statistical data to their benefits. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were accused of fudging economy figures to deceive people and international financial institutions.
Independent economists have strong reservations on Shaukat Aziz’s oft-repeated claims on reduction in poverty ratio, rise in per capita income to 1,000 dollars by next year, overall growth in the national economy and other indicators.
The government claims size of national economy at $150 billion which too has been questioned as modalities adopted to rebase economy on the year 2001-02 were never shared with economists.
Setting in place of an independent and autonomous statistical organisation even after about 63 years of independence in 2010 will be an important milestone in country’s history.
http://www.dawn.com/2007/04/26/ebr1.htm
great :rolleyes:
