This is apropos a Business Recorder editorial "Growth prospects" carried by the newspaper on last Saturday. In its conclusion, the editorial has argued: "private estimates of the growth rate for the current year is expected to be no more than 3.8 to 4 percent - a growth rate that should prompt a set of macroeconomic policy decisions that are distinct from a growth rate of over 5 percent that naturally require a different set of policies. In short, the data manipulation is compromising the capacity of the Finance Minister to take informed policy decisions."

That accurate data is critical to economic planning and judicious distribution of revenues among the federating units and between the Centre and provinces is an imperative. Not only does the absence of reliable data raise questions about government's intentions, it also invites global censure. Abraham Lincoln had famously said, "you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017