Muhammad Kamran Shehzad, Deputy Governor, State Bank of Pakistan, has said that the reliable and efficient statistics are basic ingredients for carving out effective monetary and macroeconomic policies.
Speaking at the inaugural session of a one-day seminar on "Contributions and Achievements of Official Statistics," which was organised by SBP at the National Institute of Banking and Finance (NIBAF) in Islamabad on Tuesday, he said that an efficient and up-to-date statistical system is of paramount importance for providing high quality statistics required for formulation and implementation of these policies.
Kamran Shehzad observed that the development level of a country can be judged from the type and quality of statistics it produces. "The official statistics play a significant role in understanding economic conditions of an economy and is vital for formulation of policies for the development of a country," he said and added that precise decisions always depend on up-to-date, efficient and timely statistics and quality of statistics can only be improved through collaboration among data producing agencies and other stakeholders.
He emphasised that a strong degree of co-ordination and interaction is required among statistical organisations and users of the statistics for an efficient statistical system of a country. "The statistical organisations particularly need to work together to meet the increasing demand for statistics arising from the rapid changes in global environment," he added.
Kamran Shehzad said that the SBP has always played its role in compiling and disseminating timely and reliable statistics on economic, financial and monetary aspects most pertinent to central bank. He said that a variety of data on important areas related to money, banking, international trade, monetary accounts, balance of payments, exchange rates, external reserves, foreign investment and external debt is generated in line with the international recommendations and standards. "All the statistics are compiled and disseminated according to international standards and comply with the requirements of General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) and Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS)," he added.
Kamran Shehzad expressed the hope that the seminar will create awareness about the significance of efficient statistics and improve co-ordination among the data producing agencies and users of statistics produced by these organisations. Secretary, Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan, Asif Bajwa in his keynote address said that soon there would be a professional autonomous Pakistan Bureau of Statistics that will increase the credibility of data.
He said that a National Statistics Development Strategy (NSDS) is being developed to provide a strategy for strengthening statistical capacity across the entire national statistical system (NSS). Speaking on the occasion, Dr Azizullah Khattak, Director, Statistics & DWH Department, State Bank of Pakistan said that the main objective of the seminar was to provide a forum for developing future co-ordination and interaction among users and producers of statistics, which is essential for an efficient statistical system of a country.
Munir Ahmad Aslam, Deputy Director General, Federal Bureau of Statistics made presentations on 'Price Statistics', Shahid Mehmood Butt, Director, FBS on 'National Accounts of Pakistan', Habib Ullah Khan, Census Commissioner, Population Census Organisation on 'Population Census Statistics', Amjad Jawaid Sandhu of Agriculture Census Organisation on 'Agriculture Census Statistics', Shamsul Huda, Assistant Director, Bureau of Statistics, Punjab on 'Statistics Produced by Punjab Bureau of Statistics', Shamsul Arifeen, Senior Joint Director, Statistics & DWH Department, SBP on 'Balance of Payments of Pakistan' and Rizwan Ahmed, Joint Director, Statistics & DWH Department, SBP on 'Monetary Statistics.'-PR