Abel praises launching of GDP estimates

 PLANNING and Monitoring Minister Charles Abel has thanked the National Statistical Office (NSO) and stakeholders for putting together the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures from 2006 to 2013.

Abel launched the report last week, saying visible aspects of Government progress and development such as the opening of new buildings and infrastructure could not be achieved without “some of the less sexy things in the background”.  

“The things that hardworking people (NSO) do despite it being not so sexy, it is very important obviously,” he said.  

He said Parliament had passed the Planning and Monitoring Responsibility Act   to elevate the significance of the reporting requirement to have good indicators and statistics for a central plan “we can all focus on”.

“Importantly, within that legislation, there are some punitive measures that we can impose upon heads of state agencies to actually producing the data that we require to report against these indicators and statistics,” he said.

Able urged the NSO to understand it in the context of the whole planning process so that it could perform its function fully.