PBS mandated to rebase the national accounts

ISLAMABAD: The government has mandated Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) to go ahead with approval of much-awaited re-basing of national accounts from fiscal year 2005-6 to 2015-16 in order to capture the latest ongoing economic activities.

Secretary Ministry of Planning Development and Special Initiatives Mathar Niaz Rana visited PBS on Friday and chaired a meeting on the activities of PBS particularly on national accounts, price statistics and the digital initiatives taken by PBS by shifting from paper based data collection to tablet based data collection. The meeting was attended by the chief economist, members and senior officers of PBS. Rana was briefed about the national accounts compilation methodology and the status of various census, surveys and studies conducted by PBS for rebasing the national accounts from 2005-06 to 2015-16.

The secretary emphasised that the rebasing of national accounts should be completed before the end of this financial years as so many economic indicators are linked to the rebased GDP numbers. He further directed PBS to come up with a road map of the activities with timelines.

Rana said PBS should understand the sensitivity of the price statistics compiled by PBS and the data collection mechanism should be transparent as well as true reflection of market prices prevailing in the country. He was informed that PBS had taken a major initiative by shifting from manual data collection to tablet based data collection of prices

Top official sources said there are some practical difficulties lying in the way for rebasing of national accounts as the PBS conducted 42 studies on various sectors of the national economy to finalise weightages on the basis of latest data compiled in fiscal year 2015-16. PBS conducted different studies in the last four years. Earlier, such studies were conducted by consultants through the private sector but first time it was being done by PBS itself so the quality of the done studies need to be thoroughly scrutinised before granting approval for rebasing of national accounts on the basis of 2015-16.

The last rebasing of national accounts was done in 2005-6 during the Musharraf/Shaukat Aziz regime. Earlier, the rebasing was done in 1999-2000 after a period of 20 years so it was decided that the rebasing exercise should be done after a five years.

The economic census was also done in 2005-6 and the national accounts were re-based on the basis of the same data so it was decided that the rebasing of national accounts should be done after a period of 10 years.

The PBS captured the data on the stipulated time frame but for accomplishing all other requirements it took almost four years for conducting other studies. Now it is yet to see whether the PTI government will be able to re-base the national accounts in fiscal year 2015-6 by end of the current fiscal year 2020-21 or it might be delayed for another year.

The government fulfilled key posts into the planning commission and members into PBS so this gigantic task of finalising rebasing of national accounts required team work otherwise it would remain just a pipedream that could not be materialised.