Industrial units likely to face heavy penalties: Refusal to provide information for surveys
By Sabihuddin Ghausi
KARACHI, April 5: The government may consider imposing heavy penalties and stringent punishment on those individuals and business concerns who refuse to provide information sought by the Federal Bureau of Statistics for its various surveys.
Officials say that the existing law - Pakistan General Statistical Act, 1975 - does incorporate a penalty for those who do not respond. But the penalty is only Rs500, a too small amount for the bureau, to invoke this provision against anyone in case of refusal. Hence it gives an open licence to the business concerns to treat all the official surveys with contempt.
The Pakistan General Statistical Act, 1975 binds the Federal Bureau of Statistics to use all the information during survey only for the purpose it is asked for. The law provides same penalty for the bureau if it breaches the secrecy of the information and pass on this information even to any government agency.
The former secretary of the federal statistical division is reported to have suggested a penalty of at least Rs100,000 on those business concerns who do not respond to the bureau's questionnaires. But many in the government find Rs100,000 penalty also "too little" and are proposing a higher amount for fine with some token punishment for the first default.
The Textile Commissioner office also complain of the negative response from "more than 50 per cent of the 360 textile mills" who are asked every month to provide information on cotton consumption, yarn production and other details. Hardly 180 mills reply to the questionnaires and that too after a time lag.
Textile mills were too prompt to reply when the Textile Commissioner's office enjoyed the administrative powers of issuing licences to the textile mills for the import of machinery for balancing, modernisation and replacement (BMR) during the decade of eighties.
This shows the psyche of Pakistan's businessmen. "They bow down before any person with power and authority," a young statistician remarked, who said the Federal Bureau of Statistics was purely a service institution involved in academic exercises.
"See how the businessmen behave when even a peon of the customs house visits their factories or offices," he said while complaining of rude and improper behaviour of even the top bosses of business firms.
Call it an unending adversarial relationship or a perpetual mistrust between the government and the business, the industrial and commercial concerns have preferred to throw the questionnaires of the bureau in dustbins rather than responding.
In a quarterly survey of large-scale manufacturing industries during the year 2003-04, the industrial units in Sindh are found to be reluctant to share information on their the operations.
The government launched a quarterly survey on large-scale manufacturing industries during 2003-04. The first questionnaire was dispatched to 810 industrial units in Sindh after September last year to find operational details for the first quarter of 2003-04. Officials report hardly 17 per cent response during the first quarter.
"Only 143 industrial units responded," a senior official confided, who disclosed that in Karachi only 112 responded as against 646 questionnaires distributed. The response is very discouraging from Hyderabad from where the bureau received replies from only 15 concerns out of 125.
The response is distressing from Sukkur, Larkana and Jacobabad. Strangely, the response from Balochistan-based industrial units in Hub and Windher was 100 per cent where 25 questionnaires were dispatched. But officials fear that response in the second quarter is not as encouraging as it was in the first quarter.
Statisticians give credit to the Balochistan government for ensuring response from industrial units in Hub and Windher. Response is even more distressing in Sindh for the second quarter.
The bureau employees were straightaway asked to leave the factory premises from many places and no courtesy was shown to the senior officers who were received by the subordinate staff of the concerns.
The industrial survey seeks answers to five specific questions. The first question is on employment and employment cost in the unit. It seeks information on the number of skilled, unskilled, regular, casual and contract employees and wages and salaries disbursed during that particular quarter.
The second question pertains to production and sales during the quarter. The third question asks details on income statement, seeking gross sale of goods, opening stocks, closing stocks, sale of goods purchased for re-sale and allied matter.
The fourth asks about expenditure statement and seeks information on purchase of raw material, opening and closing stock of raw material, repairs and maintenance, cost of utilities, rental payments, financial cost, bank charges, direct and indirect taxes.
The last and the fifth question seeks information on expenditure on gross fixed capital formation that asks about acquisition, improvement, transfer and payment of commission on land, building construction, machinery and equipment.
The Federal Bureau of Statistics seeks all these information on quarterly basis to find out the production cost details with relation to wages of the employees, utilities cost and financial charges.
The idea is to suggest to the government for a package to promote the industrial investment, support the expansion in production facilities of existing factories and allied matters.
"Businessmen have no time to answer lengthy questionnaires of the bureau," Haroon Rashid, vice-president of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry, informed Dawn on Monday.
He contended that most of the information sought by the bureau from business concerns could be obtained from the Central Board of Revenue where returns are filed regularly. "Ours is an academic exercise which serves the purpose of formulation of a long-term policy," an official explained, who points out that the information given to the tax departments do not serve the purpose of the surveys.
For long, the Federal Bureau of Statistics has become a dumping ground of those bureaucrats who fall from the grace of the government of the day. Abu Shamim Arif was once the most powerful bureaucrat who took on Asif Zardari's blue-eyed boy Salman Farooqui during the PPP government in 1994 and 1995.
Salman held key positions during the Nawaz Sharif government also. But Arif could not go along with the government after the elections in 2002. His last posting was in the Federal Bureau of Statistics as a punishment. The businessmen take cue from the government and treat the bureau officials with contempt.
