Imagine a ship caught in the middle of the ocean, rudderless, its compass broken, no captain certain of its direction. This is not the opening of a naval fable; it is an apt metaphor for Pakistan’s policy-making machinery today – a ship adrift in the deep waters of socioeconomic uncertainty, with no updated statistical compass to guide it. Without credible and timely data, no nation can navigate toward meaningful economic progress. In a world increasingly driven by data, the ability to generate, analyze, and act upon accurate information has become the cornerstone of governance. Data, quite literally, is today’s currency of power.
Unfortunately, Pakistan seems to have discounted this currency. While nations worldwide are investing in real-time data systems and predictive analytics, Pakistan’s data infrastructure is deteriorating at an alarming pace. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) – the state’s central agency responsible for collecting and publishing socioeconomic data – has become a shadow of its former self. Once a reasonably dynamic institution (then known as the Federal Bureau of Statistics), PBS is now largely dormant, struggling with underfunding, administrative delays, and an alarming lack of updated data.
As a scholar in econometrics, and someone deeply involved in data-driven research and policy consultation, I find this erosion particularly alarming. Policy-making in Pakistan is often critiqued for being directionless and rhetorical. But how can it be otherwise, when most of our data on poverty, labour, health, and industry is several years out of date?
Let us examine the publicly available data hosted on PBS’s own website. One would expect the country’s main statistical agency to serve as a living archive of national development. Instead, it resembles a museum of forgotten surveys.
= The last agricultural census was conducted in 2010, a full 14 years ago.
= The livestock census was held in 2006, and the agricultural machinery census even earlier, in 2004.
= The village (mouza) census, essential for rural development planning, was last conducted in 2020.
= The mining census appears to have last taken place in 2005, though no publicly available details confirm this.
Even sectors undergoing annual or seasonal fluctuations – like agriculture – are treated with indifference. While crop yield and acreage data may be updated via other government bodies such as the Ministry of Food Security, the more comprehensive agricultural statistics on the PBS platform remain rooted in the early 2010s. Pakistan’s agricultural base, which supports nearly 40% of the labour force, is essentially being planned in the dark.
When it comes to industrial data, the last “Census of Manufacturing Industries” appears to be from 2015-16, although a full version is not publicly accessible. The Labour Force Survey, another crucial indicator of employment dynamics, was last officially updated for 2020-21. The Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey, which serves as the primary source for national social indicators, was last published for 2019-20.
In the health and environment domains, the situation is equally dire. The National Health Accounts were last updated in 2021-22, while the most recent Environmental Statistics report dates back to 2015. The latest Population Welfare Statistics and Social Indicators are also several years old.
To put it bluntly, apart from price statistics and national accounts data, virtually every major socioeconomic indicator is out of date. Even when new surveys are conducted, the lag in their publication renders them almost irrelevant by the time they are released. In some areas, the most recent entries on the PBS website include bus fare statistics, ironically making them the best-maintained dataset available today.
When Data Vanishes, So Does Reality: The consequences of this statistical vacuum are devastating. Consider the period from 2021 to 2024, when Pakistan suffered one of the most intense inflationary shocks in its history. At its peak, the inflation rate touched 39%. In most economies, such a crisis would be met with emergency household expenditure surveys, revised poverty baselines, and labour market assessments. But in Pakistan, we have no recent data on poverty incidence, real wages, or informal employment.
Even the poverty line has not been updated in recent years, making any current poverty figures speculative at best. The lack of reliable and up-to-date data means that any statement made about poverty, education, health, or employment in Pakistan is essentially a conjecture – not a conclusion based on evidence.
This vacuum has real consequences. Under URAAN Pakistan initiative, the government has announced an ambitious export target of $60 billion by 2029. But how can this target be achieved – or even planned for – when we don’t know how many industries are operational, how much human capital is available, or what state our infrastructure is in? Policy targets without data are like castles built on air.
And in some cases, the absence of data opens doors to manipulation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in the past, the population of donkeys has been inflated in national accounts simply to bolster livestock growth and enhance GDP figures. This is not economic management – it is statistical theatre.
A Decline from Planning Pioneers: This institutional neglect is particularly tragic when viewed in historical context. In the 1960s and 70s, Pakistan’s Five-Year Plans were considered models for development planning in the Global South. Countries like South Korea and Vietnam reportedly studied and adapted our plans to suit their contexts. Today, both countries are economic powerhouses – data-driven, export-oriented, and disciplined.
Meanwhile, Pakistan struggles not with policy complexity, but with basic information asymmetry. You cannot build schools, deploy subsidies, expand industry, or mitigate poverty if you don’t even know how many schools, poor people, or factories there are in the first place.
How to Fix the Compass: There is still time to correct course. Here are several reform measures that can revitalize PBS and restore integrity to our statistical system:
1. Institutional Autonomy and Accountability: PBS must be granted autonomy – both administratively and financially. Simultaneously, a legal framework should mandate timely release of core datasets. Delays in publication should carry consequences for the institution’s leadership, just as failure to audit accounts has repercussions in other public bodies.
2. Regularized Survey Calendar: All major censuses and surveys – agricultural, industrial, labour, household – should follow a published calendar, with defined intervals (every 3-5 years). A publicly accessible Data Release Calendar can help enforce this.
3. University Collaborations: Pakistan is home to a wide network of universities with faculties in economics, statistics, sociology, and development studies. PBS should formally collaborate with these institutions to collect data at scale. Students can be trained as enumerators and field researchers, reducing cost and enhancing quality. This model can both address PBS’s human resource constraints and provide practical exposure to students.
4. Investment in Technology and Staff: Digitization is essential. PBS must shift to digital collection tools – mobile apps, GIS systems, cloud-based dashboards – and recruit trained professionals who can operate them. Technology upgrades are not a luxury; they are a necessity.
5. Public Transparency: PBS must revamp its website and commit to open data practices. Datasets should be easily downloadable, well-documented, and accessible to researchers, journalists, and the general public. Data transparency leads to trust and accountability.
Final Thoughts: Pakistan’s future hinges on its ability to take informed decisions. Without data, we are guessing in the dark. A nation of over 240 million people cannot afford to steer its economy with blindfolds on.
It is time we recognize data not as an academic luxury but as the foundation of national governance. Let us fix our compass before the tides push us further off course.
