In July 2017, then planning minister Mustafa Kamal introduced the quarterly release of inflation data replacing the traditional and the best international practice of monthly update.
The move not only sparked criticisms, but also tarnished the image of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and its authenticity in calculating important national statistics, such as, gross domestic product, per capita income and population census.
Mustafa Kamal said at the time that he took the decision for capturing the inflation data more accurately which, he claimed, was not possible with monthly updates.
Economists called the decision a bizarre one that, according to them, was taken deliberately to doctor the inflation data.
Inflation is directly linked with the gross domestic product and so high inflation affects the GDP growth adversely, they said.
They observed that Mustafa Kamal took the ploy of releasing inflation data quarterly so that he got time to manipulate the data.
A group of overenthusiastic statistical bureau officials assisted the former planning minister to manipulate not only the inflation data but also the gross domestic product and per capita income data, they said.
The bureau officials who opposed such unethical practices faced harassments, said director of its census wing Mohammad Abdul Kadir Miah.
Kadir Miah said that he was appointed in the current post on September 5 after the move of a departmental action against him was dropped on August 20.
He described the move as part of the harassment directed against him.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽
The process of data doctoring and harassment of the officials opposing the group loyal to the policymakers continued until the interim government led by professor Muhammad Yunus assumed power following the ouster of the Awami Leaguer regime on August 5 amid a student-led mass uprising.
Mustafa Kamal who once advised all not to listen to economists and academicians to know about the county鈥檚 economy has gone into hiding since the change in regime.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽
As the interim government has decided to prepare a whitepaper to identify misdeeds carried out in different sectors, including distortion of public data, many statistical bureau officials have already informed the 12-member white paper preparation committee how the immediate past policymakers influenced the bureau to produce manipulated data.
Debapriya Bhattacharya, head of the committee for preparing the 鈥榃hite Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy鈥�, remarked that the foundation of different聽 projections made during the Awami regime over the past 15 years was very weak.
Those who made the projections were helpless, Debapriya said while updating activities of the committee on Tuesday.
They produced such projections under pressure, added Debapriya, also a distinguished fellow of the local think-tank Centre for Policy Dialogue.
The committee is expected to describe the depth and breadth of data manipulation by the bureau in the White Paper in the next two months.
A committee member on condition of anonymity said that the data manipulation became common during Mustafa Kamal鈥檚 tenure as planning minister.
He noted that Mustafa Kamal who was promoted as the finance minister in 2019 was obsessed with GDP and per capita income regardless of the other indicators like private investment, agricultural outputs and unemployment.
鈥極bsessed with GDP and per capita income, Mustafa Kamal abused his power to pollute the BBS,鈥� said the member.
The businessmen turned politician was successful in drumming up the GDP growth narrative which ultimately laid the foundation of the so-called narrative on development story harped by the ousted Awami regime for the
most part of its autocratic regime over the past 15 years.
In 2018, the World Bank was censured by Mustafa Kamal for expressing doubt on the government鈥檚 projection of 7.65 per cent GDP growth for FY2017鈥�18.
Having made GDP growth projection for that year at 6.5 per cent, the WB, in a report titled 鈥楥ountry Economic Memorandum: Change of Fabric鈥� released in 2022, made an elaborate reflection on the statistical bureau鈥檚 doubtful calculations.聽
In that report, the bank said that Bangladesh鈥檚 economic growth was reasonably well until the 2010s.
It then identified unexplained growth of 3.7 percentage points between 2015 and 2019, describing this period rather unusual.
In 2022, the population census counting the country鈥檚 total population at 16.98 crore also sparked controversy as economists questioned its accuracy.
Economists said that any business plans, commodity demand and supply, and financial products were highly linked with population.
They complained that the country was facing supply shortage of many essentials due to inaccurate data of output at domestic level and imports amid doubts over overall population.
The low growth of population is linked with high per capita income, said Dhaka University economics professor Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir.
He said that the ousted regime was always sensitive about the per capita income regardless of the credibility of data produced by the statistical bureau.
The bureau鈥檚 credibility plunged into the lowest depth, he said, adding that a forensic probe should be lunched to identify the actual reasons for data manipulation and the mastermind behind this.