The newly appointed Statistician-General of the Federation, Simon Harry, tells Amarachi Orjiude, his plans for the National Bureau of Statistics and other salient economic issues
Your appointment as the SG of the federation is almost three months old, how would you describe the journey so far?
I agree it has been about three months (since I assumed office) and the journey hasn’t been that smooth, because I started on a very rough ground to cover a system that had a lot of challenges as a result of funding inadequacy. So, we had to adopt some radical approach to put things in their right place. So far so good, it has been rough but a lot has been achieved and I give credit to the spirit of team work that we have adopted as a system.
One of the major constraints affecting the operational effectiveness of the Bureau, according to the immediate past SG, is funding, how do you plan to tackle this challenge?
Funding is a constraint in almost every organisation. I can assure you that even if you approach the Central Bank of Nigeria today, they will still tell you that they have funding issues, so in the case of the NBS, it has always been a major problem. Our major source of funding is through the annual budgetary process, so when I assumed duty as the Statistician General, what I did was to first of all approach my principals including the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, pleading with them that we can’t continue like this as a system, there has to be an improvement of the funding situation of the Bureau, so they graciously agreed to review the NBS budget envelope upward, which was done.
Again, the Statistical Act provides for the establishment of a Statistical Trust Fund, so we are already into consultations with relevant agencies with a view to ensuring that the necessary mechanisms are put in place for the establishment of the STF. I have written a memo to the Minister of Finance in that regard. The essence of the STF will be for us to have a basket of funding where agencies producing statistics will be drawing funds and the basket will be funded by the government both at the federal and state level as well as the organised private sector. So as soon as that is approved which of course will be going to the National Assembly as an executive bill, the implementation of it will come to fruition, and I can assure you that this would now provide a room for sustained funding of statistical operations in Nigeria. But in the meantime, I am also engaged in advocacy for our development partners to come to our aid, and a good number of them, like the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, and European Union Commission are coming to our aid to improve the funding condition of the NBS.
There have been allegations in the past that the Federal Government interfered with the operations of the Bureau by influencing research results to favour its administration. What has been your experience, so far?
If that allegation is true, how was it possible that in 2016, through the information released by the NBS, the economy of Nigeria was declared to be in a recession? Also, last year, the economy of the country in the second and third quarters of the year was declared to be in a recession. So, that alone is enough to convince one that those allegations are incorrect, because the same government would have influenced the figures at that time. Declaring that an economy is in a recession means that all the government policies put in place and all the measures implemented failed to impact the economy, which was why the economy was performing poorly. And so, if the same government couldn’t influence the figures then, I don’t see them influencing them today. So, these are just allegations that are unfounded and misleading. I can assure you that no government functionary influences the output released by the Bureau or any other agency in Nigeria. The NBS has its technical autonomy and will work independence of any government interference.
Some Nigerians still have problem believing your figures, because they are convinced they are being downplayed. How do you arrive at your figures?
Well, depending on the figures, yes, you might not believe the figures because you are not in the know of the processes undergone to get those figures. So, people assume that we just sit down under the tree and manipulate dome figures and come out with some outputs. For instance, for us to be able to produce the GDP which was released recently, we had to collect information from all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, through the conduct of a quarterly establishment survey and we had to collect information on tax returns from the IRS, both Company Income Tax and the Value Added Tax. We had to also collect information from limited liability companies that make returns to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as information on the fiscal data from the Federal Government, states, FCT and the 774 local governments in the federation for analysis. We equally had to collect information from the Auditor General’s report. So, it is the aggregate of all these information, after we have fully analysed them that we come up with the performance of the economy as the GDP. The same thing happens with inflation and unemployment. So, it is always a very rigorous process that takes a lot of time. I can assure you that the processes we follow are in line with internationally defined and acceptable methods of producing statistics.
The latest GDP report showed that Nigeria’s economy grew by 4.03 per cent; however, there have been complaints from many quarters that the growth isn’t visible as previous unfavourable economic conditions remain constant. Do you think the economy is actually improving?
Nigerians need to understand the difference between growth and development. It is one thing for an economy to grow but for that growth to be translated to development, it has to be a sustained growth. It has to be growth over four to six quarters before the gains derivable from such growth will now start impacting on the citizenry of the country. Now, we have just witnessed a growth in two quarters, so you don’t expect that to be fully translated into the improvement of the welfare of the citizenry of the country. But what we are advocating is for measures to be put in place for us to be able to sustain the growth and even improve on it. When we are able to improve on the growth over a reasonable period, then we can have development.
Recently, you announced that the country’s inflation rate decreased for the seventh consecutive month to 15.99 per cent. Despite these figures, many Nigerians complain that the inflation figures are not reflective of market conditions as the prices of goods and services are constantly rising. What is the reason for this situation?
Inflation rates have consistently been declining since April through to the month of October. As a common Nigerian who comes from the grassroots, you will agree with me that the price at which you bought a tuber of yam in the month of January, would have decreased by the month of September or October. The same thing applies to the prices of so many other food stuffs. This is because the month of September/October is a harvest period, so it is wrong for someone to say that because the price of smartphone has increased in a certain market, then the NBS figures on inflation are wrong. It will interest you to know that the basket for computing inflation rate composes of 740 commodities and of these commodities, more than 50 per cent of them, are made up of food components. So, when the food component of it is declining, that has a very strong influence on the inflation rate. That was why in September, the food component declined from 20 per cent to 19 per cent and then to 18 per cent in the month of October, so that had a very significant influence on the overall inflation figure that was recorded in the month of October.
eople say it is hard to come by reliable data in Nigeria. So, most times we have had to rely on researches conducted by foreign organisations on Nigerian issues. How can we improve the situation?
The World Bank doesn’t produce any information on behalf of Nigeria, and that is the same for other multilateral organisations such as the IMF. I can authoritatively tell Nigerians that the data provided by the World Bank comes from the NBS. The best these organisations can do is to make some forecast, so that is why you see all these international bodies working closely with the NBS, collaborating with us so that they can produce data that will help us monitor development in Nigeria.
What are some of the reforms or initiatives you plan to introduce to the bureau to distinguish it from among its peers in Africa?
Having visited most of the national statistical bodies in Africa, and even beyond, I have seen the operational modalities in these agencies, including the structure and physical outlook of the agencies. So, on assuming duty, my first focus was to ensure that there is an overhauling of the manpower management and development of the Bureau as well as the structural and technical components of the Bureau. So, if we are able to pursue this vigorously, the NBS will become the leading national statistical agency in Africa and indeed it will be competing favourably with the best in the world. And you can see for yourself that in terms of infrastructure, we are giving the office complex some facelifts. You can also see from the countenances of the staff that there are already changes.
How important are state bureaus of statistics and what is being done to ensure that every state has one?
Nigeria operates as a federated state and statistics is on the concurrent legislative list. This means that every state of the federation is supposed to have its own bureau of statistics, producing statistics for that state. We embarked on a reform some years back to ensure that we establish state bureaus of statistics in all the 36 states in the country and the FCT. So far so good, as at today, we have about 28 well functioning bureau of statistics with SGs appointed in 28 states. It is our desire that very soon, the remaining eight states would have established their own bureaus. It is hoped that once they are created, they will collaborate with the NBS to make data collation and release faster. To achieve this, we are embarking on an advocacy to make sure that the remaining states are covered and I am optimistic that by June next year, all the 36 states in the country will have state bureaus of statistics.
source: punch ng
