Whether it is measuring the level of unemployment or the rate of economic growth an up-to-date, modern statistical service is essential for SA to be able to keep track of its development, measure the progress made in meeting its national objectives and provide a solid foundation for policy-making.
But statistician-general Pali Lehohla said on Wednesday (8 May) that there were some risks to the status of SA's statistics and warned that the quality of SA's macroeconomic and social indicators would deteriorate over time if Stats SA was unable to implement internationally accepted statistical standards.
"If the current status continues, our statistics will become inaccurate and irrelevant," says Lehohla.
Chairman of the Statistics Council Howard Gabriels warned in his foreword to the Stats SA work programme for 2013-14 that the budget allocations to the organisation over the next three years "minimises the ability of Statistics SA to fully implement its current five-year strategy and the Statistics Act".
The 2008 System of National Accounts continues to go unfunded and so has not yet been implemented, to the detriment of SA's national accounts.
"The System of National Accounts is a universal framework for the measurement of the economy and has been approved by the United Nations. Without it SA will potentially not be able to articulate its economic position at various international platforms", Gabriels said.
Lehohla noted that the non-implementation of two standards - the System of National Accounts 2008 and the International Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic Activities - would affect statistical information on economic growth, price stability, employment and job creation.
He said the International Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic Activities had to be updated - at an estimated cost of R100m - to take account of new economic activities that still had to be classified. Failure to do so would mean SA's classification is not synchronised with the rest of the world.
Lehohla told Parliament's standing committee on finance that with the fiscus facing budgetary pressures, in real terms Stats SA's allocation of R1.73bn this year was lower than last year (2012-13: R1.76bn).
He said these constraints would impinge on the implementation of Stats SA's strategy and reverse the gains made in establishing statistical infrastructure, which is vital for the organisation's household survey programme, the measurement of the consumer price inflation basket and the benchmarking of gross domestic product.
Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge
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