Zimstat plans quarterly reports

THE Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) plans to start publishing national accounts on a quarterly basis.
The move comes after the agency signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA), which allows the agencies to share “vital information about business entities, which operate in the local economy”.
“…there is strong need for quarterly national accounts (QNA), a barometer of measuring economic growth at short interval,” said Taizivei Mungate, ZIMSTAT’s acting director.
“ZIMRA is one of the major suppliers of data required for producing GDP as well as data for QNA,” she said.
This follows ZIMSTAT’s participation, along with national statistics agencies from around Africa, in the opening workshop for the national accounts component of the IMF Statistics Department’s project on Enhanced Data Dissemination Initiative (EDDI) in 2015.
“Key institutions namely ZIMSTAT, ZIMRA and the central bank have been identified to participate in this project,” Mungate noted.
Mungate said ZIMSTAT is also planning to start publishing provincial GDP, satellite accounts as well as social accounting matrices.
“All these assist in pointing the direction of the economy. However, there is also need to capacitate ZIMSTAT in terms of number of staff for national accounts, among other departments, in order to achieve these,” she said.
In addition, ZIMSTAT is expected to start coordinating the national statistical system which will comprise data suppliers, users, producers and research and training institutions.
Faith Mazani, ZIMRA’s commissioner-general, said: “The information shared will help ZIMSTAT in the compilation of their monthly, quarterly and annual GDP estimates, and as the authority gets some of this information on a monthly basis, ZIMSTAT will be able to have the information much quicker than before.”
Mazani said the MoU would allow for the sharing of VAT data, self-employment income tax data and business Income tax data, among other key information.
“The information we are sharing shall strictly be used for Revenue administration pu