Economic survey: Riddled with typos and errors
Govt missing targets and making mistakes .
Whoever wrote and compiled the Economic Survey of Pakistan forgot to take English 101 in college. PHOTO: PID
KARACHI:
Is it too much to expect a clean, clear and typo-free document from the Ministry of Finance, which prides itself on hiring some of the best bureaucratic minds of the country?
Well, it seems whoever wrote and compiled the Economic Survey of Pakistan forgot to take English 101 in college. The report was replete with factual errors, spelling and grammatical mistakes.
For example, a look at parts of the survey that discuss the nitty-gritty of private-sector credit growth in 2014-15 confused all. Riddled with unnecessary commas and erroneous percentage calculations, the language makes a mockery of an otherwise serious document.
“Credit to private sector increased to Rs. 161.7 billion during July- 8th May, 2014-15 against the expansion of Rs. 292.9 billion in the same period of last year, thus posted a growth of 4.3 percent as compared to 8.7 percent in the comparable period of last year,” the survey says, leaving the reader wondering how on earth the two amounts convey ‘a growth’ of 4.3%.
But that was not enough. Here is another dose of Pakistani English from the Ministry of Finance that will leave your head spinning. “However, despite low expansion, credit to private sector posted a growth of 6.6 percent on year on year basis as on 8th May,2014-15 against the growth of 5.2 percent recorded in the same period last year.”
It is up to you, poor reader, to decide whether private-sector credit grew 4.3% or 6.6% in the period under review.
Similarly, the chapter covering energy sector appears to have been written in a hurry. Consider this, “The longer term trend suggests that composition of energy consumption, the composition is changing by substituting the gas as cheaper source compared to oil being expensive.”
In another paragraph, while discussing the implication of power outages on GDP growth, it said, “However, exact cost including direct and indirect cost of power shortage and its directional relationship with growth is still unfold for developing economies especially for Pakistan.”
This section also unnecessarily talked about the oil market crisis of the 80s, but not much was discussed about the developments that took place in the past year.
The economic survey is released once a year, is a report card of the government’s performance in the past 12 months and gives a chance to authorities to show off its achievements, if any. But the 2014-15 edition revealed nothing. Instead, it revealed the shortcomings in language skills.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 5th, 2015.
Is it too much to expect a clean, clear and typo-free document from the Ministry of Finance, which prides itself on hiring some of the best bureaucratic minds of the country?
Well, it seems whoever wrote and compiled the Economic Survey of Pakistan forgot to take English 101 in college. The report was replete with factual errors, spelling and grammatical mistakes.
For example, a look at parts of the survey that discuss the nitty-gritty of private-sector credit growth in 2014-15 confused all. Riddled with unnecessary commas and erroneous percentage calculations, the language makes a mockery of an otherwise serious document.
“Credit to private sector increased to Rs. 161.7 billion during July- 8th May, 2014-15 against the expansion of Rs. 292.9 billion in the same period of last year, thus posted a growth of 4.3 percent as compared to 8.7 percent in the comparable period of last year,” the survey says, leaving the reader wondering how on earth the two amounts convey ‘a growth’ of 4.3%.
But that was not enough. Here is another dose of Pakistani English from the Ministry of Finance that will leave your head spinning. “However, despite low expansion, credit to private sector posted a growth of 6.6 percent on year on year basis as on 8th May,2014-15 against the growth of 5.2 percent recorded in the same period last year.”
It is up to you, poor reader, to decide whether private-sector credit grew 4.3% or 6.6% in the period under review.
Similarly, the chapter covering energy sector appears to have been written in a hurry. Consider this, “The longer term trend suggests that composition of energy consumption, the composition is changing by substituting the gas as cheaper source compared to oil being expensive.”
In another paragraph, while discussing the implication of power outages on GDP growth, it said, “However, exact cost including direct and indirect cost of power shortage and its directional relationship with growth is still unfold for developing economies especially for Pakistan.”
This section also unnecessarily talked about the oil market crisis of the 80s, but not much was discussed about the developments that took place in the past year.
The economic survey is released once a year, is a report card of the government’s performance in the past 12 months and gives a chance to authorities to show off its achievements, if any. But the 2014-15 edition revealed nothing. Instead, it revealed the shortcomings in language skills.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 5th, 2015.