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Matthew Vella
Statistics chief Gordon Cordina says he has learnt a lesson, and that’s to communicate better with the media after a revision of gross domestic product figures at the National Office of Statistics prompted outrage at the slashing of Lm109 million from the historical GDP figures ten years down the line.
But Cordina says the NSO is not rewriting economic history, although people like Vince Farrugia, the director general of the Chamber of SMEs, claim that a lot of electioneering in the past profited from claims of GDP figures which we know today, were not as high as previously believed. “It’s a sizeable chunk of our GDP that has been knocked off, it means that we weren’t as high flying as some government may have made us out to be.”
Controversy erupted after the NSO issued provisional estimates for the third quarter of 2006, in which it revised downward GDP data from 1996 to 2003, while appraising the stats for Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s three years in government from 2004 onwards. The changes came about because of the ESA95 (European System of Accounts) model for collecting statistics.
But the changes were enough to catch the Labour press’s eye on the surprise revision downwards of GDP.
In fact, Cordina says the NSO will enhance its communication with the media on statistical practices with a series of regular press conferences being organised.
According to Cordina, the revisions do not significantly affect the historical growth profile of the economy. The revisions downwards in the 1990s statistics reflect the fact that new data and information has only been published recently for the first time on an ESA1995 basis, while the appraisal of the 2004 and 2005 GDP data came about as more information on activities, mainly services, were becoming available. Malta Statistics Authority chairman Reno Camilleri said the revisions were based on fresh information the NSO had obtained in the past months. The figures were also verified with the European Union’s statistics authority Eurostat.
Revisions to GDP data also reflected downward adjustments to the output of the manufacturing sector to further align the system with new structural business statistics that are now becoming available.
The newly-appointed director-general Gordon Cordina, an economist who came out publicly on the pro-EU campaign in the 2003 referendum, chooses not to answer politicians. Labour MP Leo Brincat has called him “a political animal” for having stood on the Nationalist Party’s campaign podium on the eve of the referendum. “I don’t answer politicians,” Cordina says, eager to stay out of controversy. Even former Nationalist minister John Dalli has expressed concern at what sort of signal the revised stats would send to credit rating agencies.
Cordina says he cannot even comment on what this may mean for the European Commission currently monitoring our convergence to the Euro. “I only present independent and objective data.”
In fact, the new figures confirm that economic growth in 2002 was actually less, 1.9%, than previously believed (2.2%).
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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