Insights from the sky

In Pakistan, the national accounts are compiled every year, providing GDP estimates for the country. But provinces do not have the luxury to precisely know their respective contribution to GDP or how the GDP is distributed across the districts, or which regions are pacing ahead or lagging behind. There are other surveys that do provide some insights at the sub-national level, but these are generally expensive, take a lot of time to carry out and are quite infrequent. This in turn impedes government’s ability to take informed and timely decisions.

But thanks to technology, this is no more the case. Researchers all over the world are now using satellite data, which is available for a number of years and can be collected quite frequently, to undertake a number of interesting studies. The nightlight satellite data in particular is quite useful in estimating non-farm economic activity, as night light luminosity is a fairly good proxy for urbanisation and economic growth.

While such technologies may not replace the traditional surveys altogether, they can greatly supplement them, by collecting information quickly with much greater level of granularity. This means that it may be possible to gain insights into the economic activity at a fine-grained geographical level such as tehsils, union councils, or even communities. Such insights can feed into economic and urban planning decisions. Interestingly, such an approach can also be used to estimate the economic impact of special events such as Covid-19 fairly quickly.

In a first of its kind study in Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has used nightlight data to estimate district and city-level economic activity in the province. The study has been undertaken by the UK-funded Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Programme (with which I have been associated), and authored by Syed Hasan, Robert Beyer and Khawaja Hassan.

Most interestingly, the study has provided economic ranking of K-P’s districts, based on the size of their economy. There are a few districts, such as Nowshera, Haripur, and Abbottabad, where economic activity has really picked up in the last 15 years. In 2005-06, these districts were ranked at 4^th, 7^th and 11^th positions in terms of their economy, but have now moved up to 2^nd, 4^th and 5^th positions. Peshawar, of course, remains at number one, but its economic contribution to provincial GDP has also increased from 16 per cent to 19 per cent, within the same period. Then there are districts like Charsadda, Bannu and Kohistan, which have substantially slipped down in terms of their economic contribution, from 3^rd, 6^th and 18^th positions to 8^th, 11^th and 24^th positions respectively.

In terms of per capita GDP, Nowshera, Haripur and Abbottabad turn out to be the top districts whereas Kohistan comes at the very bottom preceded by Torghar. The report also shows some acute regional disparities. The per capita GDP of Koshistan, for instance, is 30 times lower than that of Haripur. Unfortunately, the combined economic contribution of the eight lagging districts — Hangu, Buner, Upper Dir, Battagram, Chitral, Kohistan and Torghar — turns out to be less than the individual shares of economically prosperous districts such as Peshawar, Nowshera, Mardan and Haripur.

The study has also generated some valuable city level insights. Different urban centres have demonstrated varying patterns of urbanisation. Peshawar, for instance, has witnessed higher densification with limited urban sprawl, compared to Abbottabad, Havelian and Galiyat region, showing much greater levels of urban sprawl.

These new insights offer wealth of information for the policymakers but more than that they also open up new possibilities of low-cost high-tech data collection which can generate evidence for policymaking and implementation that wasn’t available before. This initiative also shows how K-P is transforming and exploring new frontiers, setting examples for other provinces.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 10^th, 2021.

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