Statisticians advocate review of crude oil, trade laws The Nigerian Statistical Association, on Tuesday called on the Federal Government to review existing laws relating to data collation of crude oil sales and those relating to transactions in the Free Trade Zones. This, it said, is to enable the country get reliable statistical data on all trade transactions on export commodities for effective planning and economic development. The President, NSA, Dr. Muhammed Tumala who made the call while delivering a lecture to mark the African Statistics Day in Abuja, said that the current laws were inhibiting open data production and denying the country from knowing the actual volume and values of transactions on key sectors of the economy. He spoke on the topic ‘Open Data for Accountability and Inclusiveness, Prospects and Challenges for Nigeria.” Tumala argued that even though the Statistics Act 2007 established the Nigerian Statistical System with coordination by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, translating the provisions of the Act to national economic advantage remains a challenge as other systems and processes for open data were still lacking. For instance, he explained that while demographic data is still being produced and managed outside the coordination of the NBS, data production also remained too scanty in terms of functional and sectional coverage. This, he added, had made it difficult for planners and data users to have access to a comprehensive data on most sectors of the economy. On the need to review the FTZs and other export trade laws, particularly the crude oil lifting laws, the NSA President noted that exclusion of the Nigeria Customs Service from assessing the oil lifting transactions and those of entities operating in the FTZs continued to raise questions about the validity of statistical figures on such trade being provided by the government. He said: “It is for citizens to insist on accountability and if they are to be accountable there is no other way of expressing accountability other than using data. ”Such laws and policies on the FTZs and those that inhibit effective statistical data collation on all facets of our national life should be reviewed and amended. “For instance, the exclusion of oil trade from the responsibility and activity of the Nigeria customs is one of such laws. There is no country in the world that does that. “By doing that, you are unable to capture your trade data in that sector and unfortunately for Nigeria over 90 per cent of our external trade is based on that sector. “You can imagine that when over 90 per cent of your trade data is questionable then your entire data is questionable.” Also speaking, the Staistician General for the Federation, Dr Yemi Kale said there is need to institutionalize the use of open data in all facets oftye economy. This, he stated is the only way to achieve effective and measureable progress through accountability and inclusiveness, both as individuals and as a nation. Meanwhile, the NBS said that the economy created a total of 349,343 jobs within the third quarter of this year. Giving a breakdown of the figure, the bureau in the job creation report said 145,464 jobs were created in the formal sector while the informal and public sector created 198,144 and 5,735 jobs respectively. The third quarter figure brings the total number of jobs created within the first nine months of this year to 849,567.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 09:03:08 +0000
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