This refers to a Business Recorder editorial "Census a must for 2016" carried by the newspaper last week. It has concluded by stating that "any further postponement in holding the CCI meeting or the census would simply be counter-productive as it will result in exacerbating inter-provincial disharmony and compromise the federal and provincial government's ability to make appropriate financial decisions as well as to ensure that the emerging electoral realities based on current national and provincial constituencies' data are taken into account."
The editorial, however, seems to have failed to highlight the criticality of census in relation to the following factors: It increasingly appears, however, that subsequent governments have conveniently ignored the fact that economic activities of people are among the most important topics of investigation in censuses of population. In a country like such as ours population census is the primary source of comprehensive source of data on manpower resources and their utilisation. The credibility of data generated by institutions such as Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and State Bank of Pakistan, therefore, suffers from the absence of latest population numbers.