Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar chaired a meeting here today to review the progress on conduct of Integrated Agriculture Census-2017 (IAC-2017). Chief Statistician Mr. Asif Bajwa informed the meeting that the Governing Council of PBS had decided to merge three censuses i.e. Agriculture Census, Livestock Census and Agriculture Machinery census into one exercise i.e. Integrated Agriculture Census in which all the information being collected separately through above censuses may be collected under single visit. PBS has accordingly started preparations to hold IAC-2017 in the first half of year 2017.
The Chair was informed that PBS is going to switch over from paper questionnaire to electronic data collection through Tablets which will curtail the data collection and data processing time significantly. The Chair was informed that software has been developed on Tablets and a pilot IAC-2017 is being launched in Sahiwal district in 150 blocks at the end of current month. This will be a major breakthrough in the field of data collection.
Finance Minister appreciated the efforts of PBS to improve its working and directed that PBS may also use latest technology in other surveys/censuses to improve its performance and ensure credibility. He further directed that PBS should ensure transparency and credibility in the collection of data. He assured PBS of full support in its plans to improve the data collection and analysis process. The meeting was attended by Secretary Statistics Division as wellas senior officials of the ministry of Finance.
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