Zimstats to update GDP figures

Published: 11 October 2013

THE Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency will soon release fresh statistics of Gross Domestic Product figures reflecting the contribution of small to medium enterprises to economic growth.

SMEs have always played a pivotal role in employment and value creation but contribution to GDP, while appreciated by Government, has for long never been captured in national statistics.

Zimstats director-general Mr Mutasa Dzinotizei in an interview said the next statistics on GDP to be released in the next few weeks would show the contribution of SMEs to economic growth. He made the remarks yesterday on the sidelines of the multiple indicator cluster survey workshop for stakeholders, steering and technical committees in Harare.

Most of the SMEs are generally informal businesses that do not maintain proper accounts nor contribute to national fiscus despite generating billions of dollars and creating millions of jobs.

"We now have the GDP numbers for 2012, which will come out in our quarterly digest of statistics. We have produced additional data for us to revisit our GDP numbers," Dr Mutasa said.

Apart from showing the SMEs component of the GDP, the new statistics will show the proportion contribution of key sectors of mining, manufacturing, agriculture and tourism in the GDP.

Mr Dzinotizei said the new numbers will show that the informal sector accounts for about 20 percent of national GDP while the biggest component of the value is generated in agriculture. He said private and public sectors should now take full advantage of the litany of critical data Zimstats has generated in the recent past for evidence-based decision and policy making.

He said Zimbabwe no longer had reduced data deficiency gap, adding while funding remained a constraint the agency had 80 percent of resources required to operate optimally. Zimstats' MICS initiative is designed to collect information on a large number of indicators required for monitoring goals and targets of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

MICS has been harmonised with other data collection efforts to produce internationally comparable information, which is the cornerstone of evidence-based decision-making for the development of policies, strategies and interventions to improve the lives of women and children.

He said MICS will help Zimbabwe to capture rapid changes in key indicators as the MDG target for 2015 approaches and aims to expand the evidence base for policies and programmes as well as the United Nations Development Assistance Framework mid-term review.

MICS will also provide data on the Medium Term Plam review and revaluation, Government's Unicef country programme action plan, 2016-2020 Government/Unicef new country programme and numerous other activities between Government and development partners.

Further, MICS will provide indicators for monitoring goals and targets of the World Fit for Children and Plan of Action, UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS and Africa Summit on Malaria.
- herald