The 7th meeting of the Governing Council of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chaired by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar here on Saturday dilated at length on the overall functioning of the Council as well as activities of PBS regarding conduct of surveys/censuses on matters of national significance including population census which was of prime importance.
At the outset of the meeting, the finance minister welcomed all the members to the first meeting of the re-constituted council (7th meeting overall) and wished them “all the best” in their future assignments.
The member secretary of the council briefed the meeting about the performance of the PBS and apprised all members about the implementation status of the decisions taken in the 6th meeting. The meeting was informed about the progress made on the decisions regarding change of base year for the purpose of GDP estimation, Gross Fixed Capital Formation from 2005 to 2015-16 and similarly, the change of base year for computation of price indices from 2007-8 to 2015-16.
The conduct of population census was another important matter discussed in the meeting. The member/secretary informed the house that summary for conduct of population census is on the agenda of the CCI meeting which needs to be prioritized and members of the CCI need to be sensitized on the issue as considerable time has passed and availability of census data is a dire need of the hour. Other members also emphasized the importance of the census data and suggested to the Chair to that this issue be submitted to the next meeting of the CCI. The Chair opined that CCI is the proper forum to decide about the matter and that he will take necessary steps to bring up this issue in the next meeting of CCI.
