ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government has delayed 11 surveys of national accounts which would help determine fresh economic growth rate of the country.
At present, the GDP is computed on 2004-05 base year. The fresh surveys would help determine a new series of national accounts with 2015-16 as base year for computing the economic growth rate.
The surveys were supposed to start from July 1, 2014, and were to be completed before June 2017 at a cost of Rs289.6m.
The feasibility of these surveys was submitted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in the first quarter of 2014, but it is still lying with the Planning Commission which has yet to approve the project, said an official source.
While presiding the governing council meeting of the PBS in December 2013, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar decided that the next rebasing process will be held in 2015-16.
It was also decided that subsequent rebasing would be done in 2025 to take into account structural changes which might take place in economy and portray a real picture through macro aggregates. Internationally surveys are revised after five to 10 years.
internews
