Parliamentary secretary for Economics & Statistics, Tovihoto Ayemi, while highlighting the importance of official statistics/records asserted that reliable and realistic statistics should be provided to the policy makers so as to arrive at informed decisions on the economic programmes of the state.
Tovihoto was speaking at the 11th National Statistics Day on Thursday held under the theme “administrative statistics” at the Conference Hall, Civil Secretariat Nagaland.
He reminded the gathering that administrative statistics are an important source of official data and are indispensable for the government machineries to administer various social welfare programmes for the people. The parliamentary secretary said the regularity, quality and completeness in the collection of administrative statistics was directly interwoven with the working of every government departments and official statistics.
Tovihoto said the objective of observing National Statistic Day was to create awareness among the people especially the younger generation about the role of statistics in socio-economic planning and policy formulation in the country.
Briefing the gathering about the founder of Indian Statistical Institute Lt. Professor Pransanta Chandra Mahalanobis, in whose honour the National Statistics Days was observed, Tovihoto said Mahalanobis greatly contributed to the process of planning in India.
Speaking on the theme, chief secretary, Pankaj Kumar said National Statistic Day should be taken as an occasion to reflect on the importance of statistics in day to day life and in the process of planning and development. He stated that administrative statistics are information collected primarily for administrative purpose adding that it costs less, helps in faster collection of data and reporting through field offices. Kumar said administrative statistics also serves as a sampling frame for surveys to be used for cross checking.
In spite of the progress made over the years, Kumar lamented that quality of administrative statistics in Nagaland needs improvement. He termed inconsistencies, limited coverage, delayed reporting and sometimes, nil reporting as some of the deficiencies observed.
Highlighting the need to give more attention and thought towards maintenance of official records, the chief secretary called on all the departments to work towards improving quality of their respective administrative data by updating the system data collection towards availability of timely and authentic data.
He asserted that the improved data would not only help manage the programmes better, but would also provide more realistic base policy formulation and planning.
The programme was chaired by secretary to the government, Kevileno Angami; the parliamentary secretary also released the sixth economic census report. Additional chief secretary R.B Thong, senior government officials and others attended the programme.