Controversy over growth figures: situation underscores need for granting greater autonomy to PBS: analysts

The simmering controversy over the growth rate of fiscal year 2013-14 underlines the urgent need to grant autonomy to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in order to give credibility to economic data, say analysts. "Pakistan recorded growth in the fiscal year that ended in June that surprised on the high side at 4.1%, above the Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2014 forecast of 3.4%," noted ADB which reinforced the viewpoint of those who had disputed the growth figure.
An official said the ADB uses PBS data while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintaining a growth rate of 3.3 percent for 2014-15 clearly does not. Ashfaq Hasan Khan said that in some cases the lending agency uses its own models to make projections especially ADO and that may have been the reason for their surprise. He further stated that projecting Pakistan economic growth rate is no big thing. Lending agencies and independent economists have projected 3 to 3.5 percent GDP growth and did not revise their forecasts even after a 5 percent growth rate for the first quarter of 2013-14 was announced by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.
He added the GDP figure announced by the Finance Minister for the last fiscal has serious credibility issues as no one is ready to believe that the country has achieved a 4.1 percent growth. Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) led by Dr Hafeez Pasha not only challenged 4.1 per cent growth figure but also welcomed an opportunity to interact with the PBS as offered by the Finance Minister during the press conference at the launch of the Pakistan Economic Survey.
The SPDC further proposed that ideally, the PBS should be made an autonomous agency because this would greatly enhance the credibility of the statistics that it produces. The Finance Ministry has neither taken any step to arrange an interaction between PBS and SPDC on methodology used to arrive at GDP estimates nor displayed any seriousness to make PBS autonomous. An official said status quo simply in terms of PBS indicates that the Finance Ministry wants to keep it under control to acquire desired numbers. Dr Hafiz Pasha-led policy center estimated a growth of 3.5 percent, which is close to the IMF and the ADB forecast of 3.3 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively. According to SPDC, PBS has manipulated the data to show the highest GDP growth rate in the last six years in 2013-14.