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When the country's economy was underperforming as indicated by slowdown in industrial output, import, export, remittance, etc., and so on, the Labour Force Survey report of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) surprisingly painted a rather rosy picture for last year's employment growth. The total number of unemployed in the third quarter (July -September) of 2023, for instance, came down to 2.43 million from 2.61 million during the same period in the previous year (2022), according to that BBS survey. That marked a decline in joblessness by close to 6.9 per cent in a year. Also, the report further showed that since 2002, the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level in 2023. On the contrary, the same national statistical agency showed that the country's job growth was the lowest in that year, even below the average job growth in 12 years since 2010. It was indeed paradoxical.
The final report of the Bangladesh Labour Force Survey (2023), however, attributed this phenomenon to the fact that the year in question saw an increase in working-age population by 0.85 million who left the labour market in a single year. In fact, the BBS, in line with the method used by the International Labour Organization (ILO), counted people engaged in economic activities in a short reference period. Obviously, such a method excludes those not working or looking for job in enlisted jobless people. But if these people were also counted as unemployed, their number would have risen to over 10 million, says experts.
In this connection, some economists are of the view that the BBS counted those people who lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic as 'out of the labour market'. Using this trick, it was able to lower the number of unemployed people. Understandably, such deliberate distortion of survey figures had only one objective and that was to show the rest of the world how impressive was the then-regime's achievements in different sectors of the economy. Such attempts at deceiving the public again came to light from the Bangladesh Bank (BB)'s revised data on the Balance of Payment (BoP) which reconciled the data discrepancies in export incomes from the figures provided by the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and the National Board of Revenue (NBR). For EPB figures showed that during July-April period of the FY 24, exports increased by 3.93 per cent. However, the central bank came up with a revised export figure which actually pointed to a minus 6.8 per cent export growth over the period. In absolute terms, that came to US$13.8 billion. That means, the actual export earning during the period was US$33.67 billion, though the reported earning was US$47.47 billion. The reduced import figure of the first nine months of 2024 at US$13.8 billion equivalents to 3.0 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, the BB held the EPB and the NBR accountable for the data gap pointing to NBR's multiple entries of the export figures provided by the EPB.
The blame game apart, what should concern BBS and other departments is that if the crucial data they generate or gather are incontestable. For, any compromise on data will ultimately lead to wrong government strategy and policy on development projects. Meanwhile, the country has suffered immensely as a result of distortion of essential facts and figures of economy only to suit the whims and caprices of someone in authority. Such practices should come to an end.