Project description

Title: Support for the Federal Bureau of Statistics
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Pakistan
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Economic Affairs and Statistics
Overall term: 2005 to 2011

Context

The Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) is Pakistan’s central statistical office, where information comes together at the national level. The FBS endeavours to support decision-making by governments, research institutions, business, the international community and global players, but its performance is lagging behind that of Pakistan’s dynamic economy. Only to a limited extent can the FBS make up-to-date, well-grounded and internationally comparable trend analyses of economic development. The federal statistics services will therefore receive additional staffing and the range of subjects covered will be extended. They will also be tightened up organisationally and institutionally. The three federal statistical offices – the FBS, the Population Census Organisation and the Agricultural Census Organisation – will be merged. Branches in 34 regional offices throughout the country report to the FBS in Islamabad and Karachi. During the merger, decentralisation of data collection will be continued.

Objective

The Federal Bureau of Statistics publishes current economic data of a reliable quality in accord with commonly used international definitions and categories. This data can be used for academic purposes and as an evidence base for economic and political decision-making.

Approach

The GIZ project imparts relevant knowledge and skills for preparing, analysing and publishing statistics. It assesses planned data collection procedures, as well as the questionnaires and content, and it examines and improves national accounting methods. It is also introducing a system for calculating national expenditure on health care, a statistical business register and economic statistical surveys. Practice in using the accounting methods developed by the United Nations and other international organisations for macroeconomic comparisons is acquired through daily use. In this way, for example, price trends, economic activity data, etc. are gathered, analysed, prepared and made available for external use.

The project supports the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in establishing statistical capacities for monitoring Pakistan’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Staff members of the Federal Bureau of Statistics learn how to update old data, how to close data gaps, and how to use new classifications. On-the-job training is given the highest priority, and complex interrelationships are explained in seminars using illustrative case studies.

Results achieved so far

Data for price statistics are already being recorded electronically in the regional offices and sent via data links to the computing centre. This has saved time and expense, and improved both the quality and the currency of statistics. Procedures and processes in national accounting have been subjected to intensive review. Methodological improvements in computing processes are being prepared. The annual computation of the gross domestic product is to be supplemented by quarterly calculations. Data gaps are being filled with newly collected data. Pakistan is therefore well on the way to meeting international standards in its national accounting. The country’s full expenditure on health care has been calculated for the first time. A National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) has been drafted, which will meet international guidelines.