The LSM growth of 4.3 percent has been touted quite a bit by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and his team. And indeed, it seems well deserved. The sector grew by 4.3 percent in the nine months ending March 2014, as against 3.5 percent in the same period of last year. But for some strange reason, the numbers reported in Economic Survey 2014 do not match what has been reported by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
While both sources report overall 9M FY14 LSM growth number as 4.3 percent, the detailed point contribution of LSM’s fifteen sub-sectors reported by both bodies does not match. BR Research spoke to many a people in different government and semi-government bodies who are involved in producing or otherwise dealing with LSM dataset. But, nobody seems to have a clue.
The most eloquent answer was given by the gentleman who wrote the ‘Manufacturing’ chapter of Economic Survey 2014. He said: “I don’t know, we only take the numbers from the PBS,”—without even considering that the PBS LSM numbers for 9M FY14 have long been published and unlike Economic Survey’s tabulation, PBS’s numbers actually do add up.
This column doesn’t want to make a mountain of a molehill, for this number mismatch may well be just a clerical error of copying the wrong table or different methodologies or otherwise has some genuine explanation.
But the fact that people at the Finance Ministry do not have a clue about it is disconcerting. Plus, that they haven’t corrected their relevant sections and that they haven’t been able to answer the disparity in numbers in retrospect shows either a lack of aptitude or attitude, or both.
Anyway, there is no use fretting about it much, because one will probably never get the right answer. In the meanwhile, here is a mental note: the additional growth in LSM sector in 9M FY14 over 9M FY13 isn’t broad-based.
Seven out of 15 LSM sub-sectors actually saw a slowdown in growth or a decline over last year in 9M FY14. And oh! It was fertiliser and automobile that really drove the incremental LSM growth over last year, whereas textile’s contribution was little.
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Differences in LSM growth numbers
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9MFY14 point contribution
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Economic PBS - QIM
Survey FY14 webnote
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Textile 0.3 0.42
Food, beverages & tobacco 0.96 1.73
Coke & Petroluem products 0.41 0.45
Pharmaceuticals -0.02 -0.04
Chemicals 0.12 0.15
Automobiles 0 0
Iran & Steel products 0.18 0.1
Fertilizers 0.96 1.05
Electronics 0.06 0.04
Leather products 0.11 0.21
Paper & board 0.19 0.3
Engineering Products -0.09 -0.08
Rubber Products 0.02 0.04
Non-Metallic mineral Product 0.01 0.02
Wood Products -0.05 -0.07
Total point contribution 3.16 4.3
Reported LSM growth number 4.3 4.3
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