KARACHI, Dec 9: Serious discrepancies have been detected in the official export statistics, which put a big question mark on the government claim of over 11 per cent rise in export during last five months to $5.37 billion.
One of the most glaring discrepancies, and that is ridiculous too, is the inclusion of Pakistan's name in the name of those countries that absorb goods exported from Pakistan.
The market specific export data communicated by the Federal Bureau of Statistics to the Export Promotion Bureau shows Pakistan being one of the South and Central Asian countries that has received Rs1.21 billion worth of goods exported from Pakistan during July and August.
Then, the list shows the name of United Arab Emirates (UAE) and also in the same column the names of Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been given. Same mistake is reported to have been repeated in case of European Union (EU), which also gives a few names of the EU member countries.
Sources in Export Promotion Bureau confide that mistakes of much more serious nature have been committed in goods description against the codes given in the goods declaration form of the customs.
The customs and the private company Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) are being held responsible for these discrepancies. The Federal Bureau of Statistics of Karachi office is reported to have sent a detailed report to its Federal Secretary for sending to the Commerce ministry.
"We have identified each and single mistake in the data and information fed in the floppy of PRAL," a well-placed source in the FBS, Karachi disclosed on Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, a team of the FBS officials held meeting with the Chairman of Export Promotion Bureau Tariq Ikram to discuss the issue.
The EPB Chairman said that discrepancies were not very serious but conceded that he talked to the chairman, Central Board of Revenue in Islamabad to set the procedure right.
The customs appraisers are not very careful while recording description of the export goods and the country of destination as they are in case of imports. Imports warrant duty assessment and hence appraisers are extra careful. They tend to be casual when it comes to recording export data from the goods declaration form.
The discrepancies have risen only this fiscal year from July after the private sector company PRAL was assigned the job. Before July this year, the customs used to send bill of ladings directly to the Federal Bureau of Statistics where all information and data were recorded.
But from July this year, the Karachi customs give goods declaration forms to the PRAL where a single operator punches the data and information in data machine. "It is doubtful that anyone counter checks this punching," an official remarked who said that private sector is cost conscious and avoid extra spending on manpower.
About a decade ago, the Export Promotion Bureau, when a powerful bureaucrat Abu Shamim Arif was its Vice Chairman, got involved in export figures controversy with the Federal Bureau of Statistics.
There was some firework and finally a committee was formed which ended the dispute. Call it irony of the time or the conspiracy of events that Abu Shamim Arif became the secretary of Statitics division just before his retirement.
The Bureau of Statistics remain the much neglected administrative division of the government, which is normally the last port of call for every bureaucrat who has either fallen from the grace of the government of the day or is about to retire.
Its budget remains one of the lowest of all government departments. Its Karachi office gives a dungeon look which has not received any attention for decades. The attitude of the successive governments has not changed which is now well reflected in the work of the FBS.
Quite a few reports and surveys of the FBS failed to find approval with the government. A report on poverty ratio in Pakistan based on income expenditure survey in 2002 was suppressed by the military set-up for want of "technical accuracies and necessary processing". The report was finally suppressed and never released.
The government claim of 12 per cent rise in industrial production during 2003-04 has been questioned by a well known private research institution the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC). The Centre in its 2003-04 budget review has also questioned the inferences drawn for growth of various sectors by changing the base year.
These discrepancies in the official export data have been found when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its 195-page report released on Wednesday has pointed out the differences in figures released by the customs of Central Board of Revenue and that of State Bank of Pakistan.
In its report the Observance of Standards and Codes on Data Module for Pakistan, the IMF has accused planning division of distorting the labour market data. This report provides a review of Pakistan's data dissemination practices in context of IMF's Dissemination Standards. The report questions the quality of the surveys and credibility of the information and data.
