Economists have doubts about statistics
20-10-2012 11:35:14+07:00
Economists have doubts about statistics
While the national economy is facing big difficulties, government agencies show wonderful figures about the employment rates.
“It’s obvious that a lot of businesses have shut down or gone bankrupt. However, the statistics showed that 1.5 million new jobs have been created so far this year. It’s really enigmatic,” said Dr Tran Du Lich, a well-known economist, Deputy Head of the HCM City’s National Assembly Deputy Delegation.
This is not for the first time Lich has his doubts about the reported figures. He once said before the National Assembly that he was dubious about the number of new created jobs announced by the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
The then Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc also admitted that it was really difficult to find out accurate figures.
Regarding the statistics with suspicion, Deputy Head of the Tay Ninh provincial National Assembly Deputy Delegation Nguyen Thanh Tam many times remind the government to pay more attention to the quality of information, saying that too many problems still exist. It always happens that the reports by different ministries and branches are quite different.
Regarding the statistics about the employment rate, Tam said, the figures are quite different from the statistical agency and the agency in charge of implementing social policies. Meanwhile, the information quality will decide the quality of the policies.
The report by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) dated September 24 showed the predicted trade deficit of 2 billion dollars in 2012 and the ratio of trade deficit on export turnover of 1.8 percent.
Two weeks later, the ratio was halved in a report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment MPI which forecast the trade deficit of one billion dollars and the ratio of trade deficit on export turnover at 0.9 percent.
MOIT predicted that the total retail turnover of goods and services in 2012 would increase by 20.5-21 percent over 2011, believing that the government’s policies to stimulate the demand would help push up the consumption in the last months of the year.
Meanwhile, MPI proves to be less optimistic, forecasting the growth rate of 18 percent in the retail turnover of goods and services in 2012.
The problem was that the two reports, conducted at different times, were still shown at the same time to be served at a meeting of the National Assembly’s Economics Committee held last week.
Both Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen The Phuong and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh who attended the meeting, did not give explanations about the difference.
“Our statistics are really problematic,” said former Deputy Chair of the National Assembly’s Economics Committee Nguyen Mai.
He also complained that many statistics still cannot be analyzed to serve the programming of economic development, such as the relation between the import-export index and the Gross National Products GNP and Gross Domestic Products GDP.
“We should not simply set import and export targets by our feeling, while we don’t know how they would contribute to the GDP growth,” Mai said.
Dr Nguyen Minh Phong from the Hanoi Socio-Economics Research Institute also said that it is very difficult for policy makers to program the economic development because of the big gaps in the figures reported by different agencies.
Phong said that five departments in a province would show five different figures about the same issues. Especially, five divisions of the same division would give five different reports.
vietnamnet
