ISLAMABAD: Due to lack of cooperation from the provincial industrial departments and industrial units, the manufacturing sector data collected over almost a decade by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) is based on estimations.

The National Assembly Standing Committee on Statistics was informed on Tuesday that most of the industrial units were not responding to the questionnaires forwarded to them by PBS through the relevant provincial departments.

The committee was informed that the last Census of Manufacturing Industries (CMI) was conducted in 2005-06, which is due every five years.

Committee Chairman Dr Ramesh Vankwani stressed the need for improving and modernising PBS as all the national planning was dependent upon its data.

“Without this data, how can we plan our economic policies? Even the United Nations and other international bodies depended on industrial data provided by PBS,” he said.

The committee was informed that the result of 2010-11 CMI was withheld due to negligible response from Sindh.

Secretary Statistics Rukhsana Yasmin said that a similar situation is faced again. Regarding CMI-2015-16 response, only 2,100 units have responded out of the known database of more than 8,500 industries in Sindh.

In Punjab, 35,000 industries have returned completed questionnaires through the Secretary Industries Punjab; 3,400 units in KP, while 206 units in Balochistan have responded.

Dr Nafisa Shah in this context remarked, “Why PBS is not independent enough to devise its own system, because an important economic planning tool could not be completed only because of lack of cooperation from one provincial department.”

The officials acknowledged that consequently the economic survey and other results are also based on estimations as a limited number of industries respond to the PBS questionnaire which also includes details of labour force, tax paid and future plans of that unit.

CMI measures production and structural changes of large-scale manufacturing (LSM) industries and takes into account new industrial developments and new industrial products and establishments.

These results are used to develop new weights for Quantum Index of Manufacturing (QIM) which measures changes in production on monthly as well as cumulative basis.

The presently used weights for QIM were derived from the CMI 2005-06.

The committee decided to call the provincial departments of industries in its next meeting.

The committee members were also informed that audit of the population census would be a fruitless exercise as verification of data can only be done within three to four months post-census, but now almost a year has passed.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2018