By next summer Pakistanis will hopefully be heading to the polls to choose their national and provincial political leaders for the ensuing five years. Before that, the incumbents at both national and provincial level can be expected to tout their great performance, and their opposition to dispute it.
In the case of former, the public can at least judge PML-Ns performance against the manifesto it pitched at the time of 2013 elections, and the improvements, or lack of it, in national level economic statistics. But what about the latter; how will the public judge the incumbent provincial governments.
One answer is that it doesn't really matter because provincial politics is far more feudal than national politics. Or, that each provincial government can be expected to dole out billions more in FY18 development spending, move a few political pawns and knights around, and there you have it: a recipe for success. Others may be swayed by improvements, or lack thereof, in thana-kachehry, or health and education services provided by the provincial governments.
Hardly any of these, however, are any black and white measures of performance evaluation. Neither there are provincial manifestos against which the performance of ruling political parties could be measured; nor do important provincial level statistics exist, such as provincial GDP or CPI.
In a recent sit down with the boss of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Asif Bajwa, BR Research asked him whether the PBS needs to work on sub-national GDP and CPI. He dismissed the idea saying it is the job of the provincial statistics department. They should do it.
To that we said that provinces complain that the PBS doesn't share the detailed national accounts datasets. Bajwa responded: They already have the data. How can the PBS make national accounts without data from provincial bureau of statistics? If the provincial bureaus of statistics want any technical support, then we are always here.
While economists have long been demanding sub-national GDP, the need for provincial GDP has become far more pronounced after the 18th amendment on account of two reasons. First, the fate of millions of Pakistanis now lies with the provinces as development is by and large a provincial subject.
Second, with signs of growing political competition between the provinces each led by different political party, the people need to be able to gauge the economic performance of their province before they can chose their provincial leaders.
It is quite understandable that economic growth of a province cannot be divorced from federal level government policies and the overall economic environment. But there are examples of what provincial government can do to achieve growth and employment within their province.
In KP, for instance, Asad Umar tells in yesterday's interviews, the number of oil rigs have increased due to the efforts of KPOGCL. In Punjab, an agricultural policy is in the works. Or how Punjab's decision to do away with internet taxes had increased mobile data consumption in the province.
But what is the impact of all this on respective provincial GDP or employment? We don't know. Nobody knows. In recognition of this void, provinces have been trying to work on their GDP. However, the progress has been too little too late.
Only last year, Sindh had announced a project to come up with Sindh GDP; it had also advertised to hire technical consultants for the project. But sources say the project is yet to kick start, because technical consultants have not been hired as yet.
Likewise, Punjab had approached the PBS to share the national level data it collects for the purpose of calculating the GDP. These include the likes of PIA or Railways revenues, banking, IT, communications and overall services sector estimations that form more than half of the national GDP, which prevents provinces to calculate provincial GDP on their own.
However, Punjab was told that the Statistical Act 2011does not allow the PBS to share or produce sub-national statistics. Our contention is that just because the Statistical Act does not allow does not mean that it disallows it as well. Anyway, the matter was moved to CM Punjab so that it could be taken up with the Council of Common Interests (CCI). So far the matter has not been taken up with the CCI by any province.
The opening of this black box of provincial economies is paramount, and cannot be done without the coordination between the provinces as well as between the provinces and the centre. Not only must the PBS share the services sector and other national level statistics at disaggregated level, but it must also be a well coordinated effort to ensure that the sum of provincial GDPs is not more or less than the national GDP (sans statistical discrepancies). The fact that the centre is shying away from its responsibility does not mean that provinces are prevented from making it a hot issue. It takes two to tango.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017