AUTHENTICITY of official statistics has always been widely questioned in Pakistan. One reason for the controversy is that policymaking — poverty, economic growth, sectoral outputs and prices — is anchored in these statistics.

The national population census, which is mandatory once in a decade, has not been conducted for the past 18 years. The last census carried out in 1998 continues to form the basis of the country’s planning purposes.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics — an independent organisation — was created through an act of parliament in 2011 to address all statistical challenges by merging Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS), Population Census Organisation (PCO) and Agriculture Census Organisation (ACO).

The PBS was developed into a totally new outfit of the governing council led by the finance minister, along with a chief statistician and senior functional members to prepare authentic, correct and immaculate data. The Advisory Wing of the PBS has, however, concluded that “no progress could be observed as the data neither could be updated, revised, authenticated and large scale mess could be observed.”

In its latest ‘Pakistan Statistical Year Book 2014-15’ released a few days ago it has only confirmed these observations. The Advisory Wing has pointed out that the year book — a key publication — mostly based on secondary data received from other organisations like State Bank of Pakistan, Federal Board of Revenue, provincial departments of education, mineral, agriculture, planning and development, etc.

Some portion of data pertained solely to the PBS like prices, labour force survey, manufacturing, and national accounts etc and were produced and finalised by the PBS but with a number of discrepancies and inconsistencies.

The Statistics Division has reported that an international organisation engaged in improving the National Accounts soon lost its utility when it started simply arranging the foreign tours of the PBS management and their families. Since the foreigners working with the organisation could not get clearance from the intelligence agencies and the arrangement came to an end on March 31.

The lack of coordination among the PBS head office and its provincial offices are also reported to have started creating problems. Some provincial governments are reported to have complained about the poor coordination. “Due to lack of coordination and patronage, the main task of Census 2016 i.e. listing has not been completed properly and work done so far is full of errors and mistakes.”

The publication “Pakistan Statistical Year Book 2014-15” has to major parts — 20 chapters with tables on various indicators and explanatory notes on these chapters.

The situation is so grim that full chapters number five and eight of explanatory notes are missing. Under Chapter 7 on Energy and Mining, it is reported that the table 7.2 starts with 2001-02 whereas it is actually starting with 2004-05 on page 158 and 523 of the year book.

The PBS is reporting on its website that indices with base 2005-06 are being developed but no such series is available both on the net and on the yearbook despite the fact that PBS is going to rebase its series from 2005-06 (last rebased year) to 2014-15 for which a well funded project is underway.

Under Chapter 11 — on insurance and joint stock companies/capital markets — table numbers 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8 and 11.0 are still reported whereas under footnotes it was clearly mentioned that the data had been discontinued from SBP since 2002 etc (page 246). A decision is required for such series for which the data is not available or discontinued by the respective agency.

In chapter 12 on Labour, it is reported that latest survey was conducted in 2008-09 whereas data up till 2013-14 has been made available in the report. Under the footnote it is recorded that Pakistan Standard Industrial Classification (PSIC) 1970 is being used whereas in the latest report in the foreword it is mentioned that PSIC 2010 is being used.

So the explanatory notes of this chapter need to be revised on pages 527-529. In the chapter table number from 12.5 to 12.19 (a total of 15 tables) with source by Labour and Manpower Division are up till 2007 (pages 264-276). No one is paying any heed to the need for searching the relevant quarters who have been assigned this task of compilation of data after the 18th amendment.

Likewise, Manufacturing Chapter 13 is the same when compared with the statistical year book of 2013 on pages 277 to 296. The data has been reported up to 2011-12 without any update in this chapter. In the monthly bulletin of Statistics 2015 (August), the data available is up to 2014-15. The data has also number of flaws when compared with monthly bulletin.

Also, explanatory notes given for the Chapter 15 on national accounts are outdated on pages 535 to 550. Chapter 17 on prices description is also not up to the date.

Taking note of discrepancies highlighted by the advisory wing, the statistics division has constituted a five-

member committee on April 20 to study the year book, go through entire data and backup logs to ascertain the seriousness of the discrepancies and deficiencies and find a solution.

The committee led by a senior joint secretary would then be made a permanent forum for detailed analysis of each PBS publications coming up in future to avoid embarrassment. According to Chief Statistician Asif Bajwa a committee had been constituted on the verify problem areas and the PBS would launch addendum to the year book if discrepancies were proved.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, May 9th, 2016