State to re-look at HIES data
THE government will re-look at the Household Income Expenditure Survey which was done by the FijiFirst government.
Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad said they would like to know why the data was shelved.
“We are going to look at what happened to the last Household Income Expenditure Survey, which got changed, which was kind of rejected by the government, which did not like the ethnic data that was there,” he said.
“We are going to look at that report again.
“I’m going to have a discussion with the Bureau of Statistics and I’m going to find out what happened and whether that report is still a useful report and if it is, then that is the report that we are going to use for policy purposes.”
Prof Prasad believes the data on ethnicity that was released would be very useful.
“That report was already released, but that report was discredited by the then government.
“Now what I’m going to do is to look at the report, have a discussion with the Bureau of Statistics.
“I think those ethnic data were very useful data. And from a policy point of view, from the point of view of addressing poverty, you need to understand what’s happening in different sectors of the economy, in different societies, in different communities.
“In every country around the world, they collect poverty statistics. In New Zealand they do that, in Australia they do that; in every democracy that happens because that kind of data is very very important.
“So we’re going to look at that whole report and see why it was discredited and whether it still is a useful report.”