ISLAMABAD: The Economic Survey 2022-23 released amidst much fanfare by Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is severely limited with respect to statistical appendices compared to previous surveys.

A comparison between Statistical Appendices in the Economic Survey 2021-22 and 2022-23 reveals that that while last year it comprised of 137 pages of details (both total figures and percentages) the latest version had only 7 pages with an inordinate focus on percentages.

The exception is Gross Domestic Product which showed a 9 percent decline in dollar terms in the current year compared to the year before (375.4 billion dollars against 341.6 billion dollars this year) while GDP in rupee terms showed a rise of 24.7 percent in the two years (66.6 trillion rupees in 2021-22 to 84.7 trillion rupees in the current year).

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The latest version also lacks information on production of important crops, basic data on agriculture with respect to fertilizers, seed, land utilization, cultivation area under important crops, yield per hectare, credit disbursed by agencies and procurement/support prices of agricultural commodities.

Further, it lacks reserves and extraction of principle minerals, production indices of mining and manufacturing, cotton textile statistics, percent growth of selected industrial items. With respect to broad money, it lacks details of causative factors associated with broad money, scheduled banks’ consolidated position based on last weekend position of liabilities and assets.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023