ACCURATE DATA KEY TO NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT - MUSOKOTWANE
FINANCE and National Planning Minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane says quality and accurate data is a key prerequisite to policy makers in areas of assessing performance, detecting problems in the economy in order to ascertain results.
Dr Musokotwane said that quality data is needed at all times and that it is a thermometer that bridges performance.
Speaking during the 17th International Association for Official Statics Conference (IAOS) and the 3rd International Statistical Institute Legal statistics conference in Livingstone this morning, Dr Musokotwane said the desire of most African countries is to improve its people’s lives using data by the year 2030.
The Minister said that this is in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 2030.
Dr. Musokotwane observed that it is against this background that Zambia undertook a step to enact the Statistics Act no 13 in order to put in place the United Nations’ desires which requires an effective way of accounting for every data that is collected.
He further added that Zambia realizes the importance of having an effective data in the running of its affairs, more reason it undertook the exercise of census last year.
Dr Musokotwane said, it was on that view that the government will continue to render support to the Zambia Statistical Agency, (ZAMSA) Office in order to effectively operate and manage data.
And United Nations Deputy Secretary General Amina Jane Mohammed noted that it was critical for Africa to improve data availability in order to improve people’s lives.
Ms Mohammed said that the transformation of Africa lies in the young people adding that availability of data is key to achieving the SDGs.
She has further congratulated the government of Zambia for hosting the first ever conference to be hosted by the African Statistic office.
In his key address, prominent statistician and founding director of the African Centre for Statistics, Professor Ben Kiregyera said that statistics has become a core component of the monitoring and evaluation frameworks in development processes in all African countries.
Prof Kiregyera said that it is also the case that statistics continue to provide the evidence needed to improve decision-making, document results, and heighten public accountability.
However, he expressed concern that many governments globally have been attempting to undermine the work of statistics offices for their gains.
Prof Kiregyera said that some Governments tend to alter official statistical figures to suit themselves and mislead their citizens.