Also available in Bangla Reliable data portray results
National policymakers and the international development community have become increasingly aware of the need to strengthen statistical capacity to support the design, monitoring and evaluation of national development plans, including Poverty reduction Strategies and sector strategies, and the global Millennium Development Goals. The Second International Roundtable on Managing for Development Results in February 2004 and the resulting Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics emphasized the need for National Strategies for the Development of Statistics to improve the evidence base to “manage for results” by providing a strategic framework for developing relevant poverty-focused statistics. However, good statistics is not just a concern for the development community. Timely and reliable information is needed by governments, businesses, the press and citizens to make informed decisions.
The World Bank’s lending program STATCAP
The World Bank’s new lending program for statistics, STATCAP, is designed to provide resources needed to build a long-term, sustainable statistical system in countries. The program has several special features including flexibility in financing, meeting recurrent costs, providing new means of investment and making best use of all sources of technical support and advice.
Statistical capacity in Bangladesh requires greater attention
In Bangladesh, there is agreement within government, the business community and civil society about the importance of good statistics as a basis for informed decision making and for monitoring national progress. While the statistical system in Bangladesh has a number of strengths and is reasonably well established, there seems to be fairly broad consensus that at present it does not adequately meet current data needs, nor does it seem to have the capacity to respond to new demands. It is also clear that the demand for statistics is growing, not least because of the requirement to monitor the implementation of the Bangladesh’s National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction, which was approved last year.
Many of the problems faced by the statistical system have been documented in a number of previous assessments. Identified problems include:
• Limited capacity of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) to provide leadership to the statistical system as a whole;
• Limited levels of professionalism and inadequate mechanisms for coordination between data producers;
• Limited consultation between data providers and data users;
• Long time lags in the dissemination of key economic statistics;
• Outdated sampling frames and registers;
• Duplication in data sources and inconsistencies in key indicators and data series;
• Overall lack of accountability; and
• Inability of the statistical system as a whole to anticipate and respond to new demands for data. Three stage strengthening action plan
Bangladesh’s statistical capacity might be strengthened in three stages:
First, data quality could be enhanced quickly in four or five priority areas through technical improvements in data collection, compilation and dissemination. The aim would be to identify areas where measurable improvements could be achieved within 12 to 18 months, without requiring either legislative or institutional change. This would be a quick, short term plan to address some of the problems outlined earlier. Discussions are underway between the Government and the Bank about a possible support from the ongoing Economic Management and Technical Assistance Program (EMTAP) for these first stage activities.
The second stage, which could be implemented in parallel, would involve preparation of a national statistical master plan for improving the statistical system.
In the third stage, implementation of the plan might be supported by an investment lending project, which would also have to address institutional issues, including an adequate legal mandate for official statistics, the status of BBS and mechanisms for effective coordination.
April 2006
___________________________________________________________________________________ Contacts:
Rezwan-ul-Alam (8802) 815-9015, Ext 4242,
E-mail: salam3@worldbank.org For more information on the World Bank in Bangladesh, please visit :
www.worldbank.org.bd & www.worldbank.org To read more about STATCAP, please click here To read more about EMTAP, please click here
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