Cut-Pasted survey statistics challanged(Large scale manufacturing numbers manufactured)

Cut-Pasted survey statistics challanged
By Israr Khan
ISLAMABAD: Draftsmen who were given the job at the Ministry of Finance to typewrite the Economic Survey 2006-07 have apparently cut-pasted the previous year's material, as a number of misrepresentation of facts have gone into the new survey.The survey's chapter on Manufacturing and Mining is full of errors and blunders. It has been totally cut-pasted only some digits and years have been changed, while the sense of text which has to be replaced in new survey remained the same as was in last year's Economic Survey 2005-06.The credibility of the official statistics is also evident from the fact that the statistics of the large-scale manufacturing used to be released on monthly basis some years ago.After July-September figures were not satisfactory for the government, they were stopped and did not appear in the last two quarterly reports of the State Bank of Pakistan, which is unusual. Suddenly they were manipulated to attain 7.0 percent growth target.All of a sudden July-April figures were released for inclusion in the National Accounts Statistics. Economic Survey contained July-April figures in grotesque manner.This gives an impression of concocted figures. In the chapter the poor and wrong representation of digits and facts is evident from the fact that the survey says, “Large-scale manufacturing, accounting for 69.5 percent of overall manufacturing registered an impressive growth of 8.75 percent in the current fiscal year 2006-07 against last year's achievement of 10.68 percent. There has been a slight decline in growth in the manufacturing sector due to multiple reasons like reduced production of cotton crop, sugar shortage, steel and iron problems and last but not the least global oil prices. All of these reasons contributed to reduced growth in 2006-07”. Should this not be called the fudging of facts or?As for instance, on page 35 in the introductory part, the survey says that overall decline in manufacturing sector during FY2006-07 was due to low cotton production, while in the very next page in table 3.1, it contradicts itself by stating that cotton yarn production grew by 11.9 percent and cotton cloth at 7 per cent over the previous fiscal. The Chapter also blamed sugar shortage as another reason for decline in manufacturing, while on the other, the survey say's that sugar production increased by 19.6 per cent in July-April 2006-07 over the corresponding period of the previous year.It says that there was a steel and iron shortage in 2006-07, while on the next page it says that billet production has increased by 11.18 percent to 3.11 million tones against the corresponding period of last fiscal. The chapter attributed reasonable growth to increasing demand for the durables but in the subsequent paragraphs it highlighted visible downward trend in the production in durables like TV and Cars.Besides, in mining and quarrying section of the chapter, it says that mineral industry is contributing to national economy just around 0.5 percent while in contrast on page 10 of Statistical appendix, table 1.2, it shows that during last four years its contribution to GDP was 2.6 per cent in 2003-04, 2.7 percent 2004-05 and 2.6 percent each in 2005-06 and in outgoing fiscal.Apart from all these, the survey claims, “High levels of liquidity in the banking system, an investment friendly interest rate environment, a stable exchange rate, low inflation, comfortable foreign exchange reserves, stronger domestic demand for consumer durables and high business confidence among other things will again boost the manufacturing sector growth rate up to a reasonable level”.In fiscal year 2006-07, the interest rate went up and tight monetary policy has resulted in substantial decline in credit to the private sector. In Chapter-1, lower growth in consumption is attributed to higher interest rates.Should it be called the ignorance of learned authors of the Economic Survey or manipulation or misrepresentation of facts?It also says that low inflation would contribute to LSM growth, but unfortunately, inflation during the fiscal year stood at 7.9 percent, which is substantially high.