The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics will seek expert approval to ensure data accuracy before releasing national data in a bid to overcome the disrepute it earned for alleged data manipulation during the immediate past Awami League regime, ousted amid a mass riots of August 5.

Its officials said the bureau has already set up about half a dozen expert committees to support its eight wings responsible for preparing data on the country’s gross domestic product, per capita income, inflation, demography and health, units industrial and labor force.

The projects of the committees are awaiting the approval of the planning counsel, the bureau’s director general Mohammed Mizanur Rahman told New Age on Wednesday.

He said the committees made up of experts from non-governmental organizations, teachers, civil servants and economists.

The statistics office, which has faced criticism from economists and companies for producing allegedly inconsistent data, will now seek validation of its data from experts, according to the directives of planning adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud.

Wahiduddin, who replaced Salehuddin Ahmed as planning adviser on August 15, directed the bureau to get the approval of the proposed committees in terms of data preparation and dissemination as well.

The measures would end the bureau’s previous practice where the Awami regime was forced to seek approval from political authorities for the preparation and dissemination of data, bureau officials said.

Former World Bank Dhaka Office Chief Economist Zahid Hussain said the positive results of such a directive have already been seen with the inflation update from July to August.

Global inflation rose to 11.66% in July, higher than average inflation of 10.9% in 2010-11, the last time average inflation exceeded 10%. July’s hyperinflation was caused by staggeringly high food inflation of 14.10% that month as the supply chain network was severely disrupted by the curfew imposed by the then Awami government to deal with fierce demonstrations across the country.

Zahid Hussain noted that another major reason for the sudden rise in inflation was that the bureau officials, who overcame the fear of reprisals, published the actual inflation in July, showing the excessive increase in inflation by about 3.66 percentage points between July and June.

Many cases of political interference have taken place in the work of the statistics bureau during the 15-year Awami rule, especially in the last few years amid the prolonged economic recession.

In July 2017, the then Planning Minister Mustafa Kamal introduced quarterly publication of inflation data, replacing the traditional and international best practice of monthly update.

The move not only drew criticism but also tarnished the office’s image, calling into question its authenticity in calculating vital national statistics, including gross domestic product, per capita income and the population census.

In another case in 2022, the statistics office published its August and September inflation update in October of that year, prompting the International Monetary Fund to question the reasons for the delay in a $4.5 billion loan program for which they have negotiations began that year between the creditor. and the Awami regime.

Bangladesh, in a bid to address its severe dollar shortage, received the first tranche of the loan program in 2023, which will continue until 2026.

In 2022, the World Bank in its report titled “Country Economic Memory: Changing the Fabric” identified an unexplained increase of 3.7 percentage points between 2015 and 2019 to highlight questionable calculations by the statistics office, while economists said that business plans, commodity supply and demand, and financial products were invariably deeply tied to data accuracy.

The Director General of the Bureau said that in its report, the committee on the “White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy” would highlight the issue of data manipulation, if such things were to happen.

The accuracy and reliability of government statistics is among the 15 topics of the white paper’s drafting committee, led by distinguished fellow Debapriya Bhattacharya of the Center for Policy Dialogue.

Other areas that will be focused in the White Paper are: the macroeconomic challenge, the review of the growth of the gross domestic product, inflation and its shocks, poverty, inequality and danger, the mobilization of domestic revenues, the setting of public expenditure priorities, the balance of external debt. and its threshold, megaprojects review, the real picture of the banking sector, the situation in the power and energy sector, the business environment and private sector investments, illegal money and its smuggling, youth employment and labor market dynamics, the labor market over also increase the rights of Bangladeshi expatriate workers.

Debapriya Bhattacharya has already said that he expects the committee to describe the depth and extent of data manipulation by the statistics office and called the basis of various projections made during the Awami regime for the last 15 years very weak.

On 28 August, the caretaker government that succeeded the Awami regime formed the full committee for the “White Paper on the State of the Bangladesh Economy”.

The government has asked the committee to submit its report within 90 days of the commencement of its functioning.