May 11, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 23, 1428

PESHAWAR, May 10: The NWFP government plans to finance a multi-indicator survey in the forthcoming Annual Development Programme to assess socio-economic conditions in the province.

The planning and development department had prepared a concept paper for the proposed multi-indicator cluster survey, which was likely to be included in the next ADP, an official told Dawn here on Thursday.

The official said the idea behind the survey was to provide first-hand information to planners about social indicators of the province, adding that the activity, which would cost Rs80 million, would be used in future planning.

In the proposed survey, impacts of development activities carried out in health, education, water supply and sanitation, environment and other sectors during the last couple of years will be assessed.

Currently, the official said, planners were relying only on stale data while making a development strategy.Another official observed that investment on data collection and statistics had been a low priority area for governments, that was why planners depended on information given by the federal government or international donor and lending agencies about social indicators of the province.

About the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the official said that to assess outcomes of development initiatives taken to meet targets set under the MDGs, the provincial government had compiled its first MDGs report a few months ago.

The official, however, said the report was incomplete because it covered seven goals and 32 indicators due to non-availability of required data against 16 targets and 37 indicators adopted at the national level.