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National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has slammed critics of its figures, saying that their opinions are misleading and lack content.
Speaking to Daily Sun, the Statistician General of the Federation, Dr Simon Harry explained that while the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) determines the performance of an economy, the production of Consumer Price Index (CPI) determines the changes on the prices of goods and services. The same way, the production of unemployment figures which is done through the labour force survey certainly follows processional laid-down guidelines provided by the United Nations Statistics Division which is the co-ordinating organ of the statistical system in the entire globe.
“So, for somebody to sit down somewhere and assume that the entire process is flawed or influenced by any government, certainly that is not correct. NBS is strictly professionally autonomous and as such the process of producing statistics from the beginning to the end of it is strictly done by NBS. For the GDP, we have our staff all over the federation. And so, we conduct what we call quarterly establishment survey and then again, that is complemented by administrative statistics. For instance, we collect information from Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and Companies Income Taxes (CIT) as well as Value Added Taxes (VAT). Again, we collect information on fiscal data from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, both at the federal level and each state of the federation. Again, we collect the audited report of the Office of Auditor General of the Federation as well as the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) auditors general.
