Lack of data hinders economic planning

By Sifelani Tsiko
LACK of national statistics on key sectors such as health, education, agriculture and industry is hindering Zimbabwe’s economic planning process.
This scenario has had profound effects on the economy. Policy and decision-making as well as service delivery have suffered while proper allocation and targeting of resources has been hampered and citizens have been unable to make informed choices.
Government has not been able to effectively monitor and report on progress on the one the hand and, on the other, it has not been properly held to account for some of the policies and decisions.
Zimstat, formerly known as the Central Statistical Office, stopped conducting surveys on industry and employment between 1999 and 2006 owing largely to lack of resources and skilled staff.
The agency last produced the Agricultural and Livestock Survey in 2006, the Labour Force Survey in 2005 and the Census of Industrial Production in 1999, according to media reports.
Zimstat acting director-general Mr Moffat Nyoni says the country’s economic statistics are generally lagging behind far behind schedule in some cases by more than a decade.
He says, for instance, the Census of Service was last conducted in 1981/82, while the Industrial (Census of Industrial Production) was last done in 1999.
Agriculture was done in 2001 and Consumer Price Index is up to date but the basket was last done in 2001.
The Labour Force Survey, which is supposed to be carried out after every five years, was last done in 2004.
Researchers, academics and data users say there is little or no data on the country’s key sectors of the economy. For example, they say, the country still lacks up-to-date statistics on mental health hindering the management of the disease.
Research on mental health is very little making it difficult to know the extent of the prevalence of mental illness, epilepsy or drug abuse. National statistics are the foundation of Government policy and planning.
“The quality of Zimbabwe’s statistical data is so poor that officials are in many cases driving blindfolded,” said a Harare-based trade and policy analyst.
“Academics, policymakers, investors and other data users are unable to find relevant, reliable and high quality data to analyse and devise social and economic policies. Zimbabwe needs to adequately finance the national statistical agency.”
Information gaps and the quality of Zimbabwe’s statistical data are quite worrying for many.
“How many Zimbabweans are there? Do they have enough hospitals and doctors to serve them? How many kilometres of paved roads cover the country? How many children will start school next year? How many students are there in Zimbabwe’s private and public schools, colleges and university? How many are studying abroad? asked Blessing Mushore, an economist working for a large retail company.
“We need to know all this. The bulk of data in use is outdated. It’s no longer relevant and reliable. Formulating policies on the basis of this outdated data may lead to disaster.”
Adds Regis Mafuratidze, a former chief legal officer in the Attorney-General’s Office: “We believe in evidence-based policymaking. Without reliable information, it is impossible to make good decisions.”
A snap survey by the writer revealed three major information deficiencies of Zimbabwe’s national statistics: it is often out of date, its quality is low and the public has limited access to it.
The 2010 Millennium Development Goals Status Report for Zimbabwe, for example, when analysing poverty trends used the 2003 Poverty Assessment Study Survey. The rate of unemployment is also still based on the 2003 figures – 63 percent.
Migration figures for professionals, maize and other crop output assessments and data for key sectors are still largely based on the 2000-2003 period before the economic meltdown in the 2005-2008 period.
“We experienced problems at one point when we were trying to come up with policies to protect the elderly population in the country,” says Mafuratidze. “We didn’t have the current status of Zimbabwe’s greying population. We didn’t know how many were on pension, how many were not. There were no figures.
“We should treat information production as any other industry,” he says. “Statistics for the elderly could have helped us determine how much the fiscus could devote to support our ageing population.”
A University of Zimbabwe statistician says the country is facing a national statistical crisis which opens the country’s resources to abuse.
Other experts criticised not only the low quality of available data, but also the legal and bureaucratic difficulties in obtaining official information. A fundamental problem with Zimbabwe historical data is its lack of continuity, one expert notes. “Where statistics are available, they generally have not been gathered in a consistent manner over the time period in question. The statistics become questionable and one cannot use them to make important decisions,” says the expert.
“The statistics which are relevant to our lives are likely to change over time. Twenty years ago, computer ownership would not have been thought of as a meaningful social indicator. Any programme to improve the quality and quantity of social indicators will need to take into account that these indicators will change over time.
“For instance, in Zimbabwe you may want to know the number of people with access to computers or Internet. At present, there are no credible figures. How can we plan without statistical information? We have to implement good statistical practices to ensure that data sets are consistent over decades.”
Investigations by the writer found that confusion and disarray surround records of deaths in the country. It is impossible to conduct an audit of them at the registry. For instance, records for the number of people who have died in rural areas cannot be accessed easily. This lack of information is a blight on the country’s registry system.
Says a UZ student: “The whole purpose of an inquiry is to learn lessons from what went wrong. It’s frustrating to be denied information for research purposes. By sitting on this information that may assist people, we are failing in our duty to be accountable. It is secrecy for no good reason.”
“Information on a whole range of subjects is widely lacking and this compromises scholarship,” says the UZ social work student. “We have a huge amount of knowledge that if collated could help us understand what mistakes and problems keep recurring and what solutions could be put in place to prevent the deaths of prisoners, for example.”
In Zimbabwe and most other African countries, there is pressure on national statistical systems to deliver better official statistics in terms of relevance, scope, quantity and quality, consistency through timeliness and level of data disaggregation.
“Various assessment of statistical capacity in Africa show that past inadequate attention to statistics, the low profile for statistics and under-investment in statistical capacity development by national governments have rendered the said systems weak, under-resourced and vulnerable,” notes Dr Ben Kiregyera, director for the African Centre for Statistics in a paper titled: “Reforming National Statistics Systems in Africa”.
“By and large, statistics has not been mainstreamed as a sector to be targeted for development in national development plans.”
He says some assessments show that donors have provided considerable technical and financial assistance to support various statistical activities in Africa. In the first half of 2010, the African Development Bank provided funds to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) to overhaul the economic and social data statistical reporting system after concluding that data from the agency was unreliable.
The United Nations Development Programme and other donors have also provided material and financial assistance in this regard.
With new funding from the AfDB, some of the surveys to be developed include a Quarterly Employment Inquiry, a Business Tendency Survey, a Census of Industrial Production, a Manufacturing Index and an Information and Communication Technology Survey.
“The department faced a number of problems due to political polarisation resulting in the low profile and perception of the department. The year 2009 was a difficult year for us,” says Mr Nyoni. Zimbabwe faced an economic crisis of huge proportions from 2005 to 2008 characterised by runaway inflation, shortages of basic goods, flight of skilled manpower and general collapse of service delivery countrywide. Zimstat was not spared by the crisis.
Plans are afoot to restructure the operations of the statistical agency following the enactment of the new Census and Statistics Act that aims at transforming the CSO into a semi-autonomous agency.
One of the key provisions of the new statistics legislation is the establishment of a National Statistical System.
Dr Kiregyera notes that there is now greater recognition among stakeholders in Africa of the need to scale up support to statistics development to monitor policies, implement public service reforms and to achieve development outcomes and results.
“Strengthening of national statistics offices should be seen as the entry point in further improving the national statistical system and as part of desirable statistical reforms,” he says.