The government’s first-quarter report on foreign employment is — to be blunt — misleading. One set of results in the report prepared by the Department of Foreign Employment shows 0.6 per cent decline in the number of people leaving the country for employment purposes in the first three months of the current fiscal year, while another set of data in the same report shows a fall of 9.33 per cent. It appears the problem lies in data entry. 

In one part of the report, the number of people leaving the country in the Nepali month of Bhadra 2069 — mid-August to mid-September 2012 — has been presented as 27,098, while in the other segment it is said to be 41,932. There is another discrepancy as well. One part of the report says 27,029 Nepalis left the country for overseas job destinations in the Nepali month of Asoj 2070 — mid-September to mid-October 2013 — while the same report also says 31,959 departed for foreign lands in the same month. 

Further down in the report, the sum of male and female job aspirants leaving the country also does not tally with the total number of people who left the country in the first quarter.

The Himalayan Times flagged these inconsistencies to the department on October 31, and it acknowledged its mistake. But no change has been made so far and neither has the report been removed from its website.

This example is just the tip of the iceberg. There are instances of data inconsistencies in other sectors as well. And they only help in spreading wrong messages and breeding mistrust, or worse. 

One such example is trade data, which is published by three different government bodies — the Department of Customs (DoC), Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), and Trade and Export Promotion Centre (TEPC). DoC, for instance, says merchandise goods worth Rs 50.40 billion were imported in the first month of the current fiscal year, whereas NRB, the central bank, says goods worth only Rs 49.45 billion were imported during that period. It was the same during the last fiscal year. The DoC data show imports of Rs 593 billion in the last fiscal year. NRB’s statistics show imports of Rs 556.74 billion, whereas TEPC data show imports of Rs 601.21 billion. 

“We are surprised to see these inconsistencies as the two bodies take raw data from us (the DoC),” a DoC official said. A high-ranking NRB official said most of the bodies refer to internationally recognised systems like Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System or the United Nations International Merchandise Trade Statistics while compiling data. “The discrepancies may have occurred during processing and analytical phases, as different bodies follow their own methodologies during these stages,” the official said.

So, whom should the public and professionals rely on while conducting studies on trade? The bigger question is are the data on the trade balance, which calculates the difference between exports and imports, and the Balance of Payments, which provides a picture on monetary transactions conducted by a country with the world, reliable?

Nobody has answers to these questions.

To standardise data collection and production methods, the Central Bureau of Statistics had recently told The Himalayan Times that it has taken a lead in preparing a draft of the National Strategy for Development of Statistics. But not much progress has been made till date.

Published on: 13 November 2013 | The Himalayan Times