CSO CRIES FOUL AT ZITF

THE Central Statistical Office (CSO) is disappointed that it has not been awarded any prize at the Zambia International Trade Fair (ZITF) despite displaying sufficient statistical data in a user-friendly form.

CSO acting Director for Census and Statistics Goodson Sinyenga wondered what criteria was used to award prizes to companies, leaving out his organisation, insisting that it had done its best.

Mr Sinyenga was speaking at the on-going ZITF where he released the monthly inflation and statistical bulletin.

''You can see that, as CSO, we have displayed all the relevant statistics in terms of inflation and other relevant areas of our economy, but we have not been given any award for displaying a lot of statistical data.

"You start wondering what criteria does the management of the ZITF follow or use for any company to win any award at this show. May be, they should review the criteria they use to award prizes to companies exhibiting at the trade fair,'' Mr Sinyenga said.

And Mr Sinyenga said the CSO would carry out a census of households in 2020 and has since urged the media to help in sensitising the people about the census.

He said it had been a long time since the last household census was conducted and so it was imperative that the exercise was carried to have an update on developments in the country.

"From the last census we conducted, a lot of things have happened. So we need to update the information we had from the last census we carried out. We have had a lot of capital infrastructure in the country, which needs to be updated.

"When we had the last census, there was no Kalumbila Mine and some infrastructure was not put up. So we will be conducting a household census in 2020 and we are calling upon the media to help in sensitising the public about the census," he said.

He also urged Zambians to take the economic diversification programme seriously so that they could start producing goods locally and sell them to other countries.

He said it was sad that most of the goods that were being sold in shops were produced in other countries.

''We need to take diversification seriously so that we can produce our own goods and sell them in other countries. If we develop agriculture or other sectors like manufacturing, then we will be producing food and we will be talking about value addition," he said.