Unregulated data collection bane to policy decision

Govt’s outdated methods paralysing economy, leading to vast illegal networks

ISLAMABAD: How many agencies of the federal and provincial governments are operating in the economic, trade, finance and revenue sectors for collecting data that help in developing and stabilising monetary policies?

Keep counting and you would still miss out on one or two. The most important among them are the federal and provincial finance ministries, State Bank of Pakistan, land revenue authorities and vehicle-registration authorities.

The hub for collection  of data for analysis among these agencies is the Federal Statistics Division and the State Bank of Pakistan.

It is in these two agencies that analyst work to make fiscal, productive, inflation, revenue-sources and other relevant policy decisions. The dismal situation of monitoring information, however, is the same in all these agencies: collecting, posting and transmitting inaccurate data.

Domino effect

Poor monitoring, inevitably leads to poor decision making. And this situation persists for decades, causing anarchy at the policy level. No federal or provincial authority has realistic figures on the situation of bank-loan assisted industries, the default situation, the actual pricing of goods at the marketplace or even the actual number of vehicles plying on Pakistani roads.

The data available is not just poor and misleading, it is scattered among more than 25 major agencies, including the small-, middle-tier and central levels. Lack of coordination even among the holders and operators of such data is an additional curse. No provincial or central agency is designated to compute data even for sensitive analytical practices.

Non-integration of data practices prevents main-framing of statistics regarding privately held arms, land-holdings, identity of holders of property and vehicles. Ironically, no relevant committee of the parliament so much as asked the attached departments or the central data operating authorities to maintain statistics.

Pakistan has remained a victim of ghost data operators who can make the policymakers commit blunders of tremendous magnitude while projecting the situation of next fiscal year on the basis of available statistics that are collected, computed and analysed incorrectly.

Fuelling criminal sections

Who benefits from this situation? The answer can cause you a fit. The top beneficiaries are terrorists, smugglers, benami property and financiers, corrupt bureaucrats, allocators of public money to the provincial and federal departments and exploiters who see this as opportunities to plan their next heist.

This criminal nexus operates in a number of ways, mainly by hoodwinking the federal and provincial officials, who are unaware of the basic data to advise the government regarding step needed to be taken regarding policy issues.

Any loopholes in the govt’s policy is a chance for these criminal minds to take advantage of. For instance, they will go land-grabbing if the government does not know which land it actually possesses without private share.

The absence of accurate statistics leads to several problems — it can help cover transactions within the banking sector and to/from foreign lands. It prevents computing the actual number of illegal immigrants, illegal money transfer, purchase of property through fake NICs; especially by illegal aliens and blinds authorities about the magnitude of gun-running and drug-trafficking.

If you look closely, you would see that criminal elements in each wing of the civil-military bureaucracy take advantage of this situation. The NLC case is one example of this sort, where, the cover of military was used to prevent data scanning by the independent quarters. Thus they got their ill-gotten money through manipulation of the ghost data operators; and through these unchecked transactions, money was siphoned which was neither taxed nor detected.

The writer has worked with major newspapers and specialises in analysis of public finance and geo-economics of terrorism

Published in The Express Tribune, August 31^st,  2015.

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