CB wants resources at govt.’s statistics office beefed up

The Census and Statistics Department (DCS) requires more resources if the new economic measurements introduced are to be followed properly, the Central Bank said last week.

Central Bank Governor Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy at a recent media briefing said that the DCS has done well to introduce an updated framework for calculating the country’s gross domestic product but the figures are not as accurate as they could be.

“For that framework to work well you need a lot of data, you need a lot of surveys. At the moment, they (DCS) don’t have the resources to undertake the surveys that are necessary to back up the very welcome framework that they have introduced. This has caused some concerns on our side and we have consulted with them,” he said.

He said that the intelligence or competency of the staff at DCS is not the problem.

“This is something that we need to work on. They have the competence and they have the ability to sort it out. 

They need to be given the resources to make this system work well,” Dr. Coomaraswamy said.

Due to the lack of these resources, he said that the DCS currently uses proxies to measure the economic contribution of some economic subsectors, which leaves out certain economic activities from national accounts.