Integrated System of National Accounts for Pakistan: Concepts, Sources and Methods in Brief

Abstract

The function of the national accounts is to provide an interrelated and consistent set of economic statistics of the transactors in the economy. Those statistics relate to the circular flow in the economy of production, consumption and accumulation. They are used to assess the performance of the economy and should facilitate the application of economic theory. In Pakistan, a systematic design of the system of national·accounts has been lacking. Basically, the system is limited to macro economic production statistics on value-ad~ed by sectors and expenditure series. Moreover, the present system lacks internal consistency checks. Discrepancies cannot be assessed due to the existence of residual sectors. As a result, the national accounls have not been exploited in their function for the evaluation of the performance of the economy. During the mid-1980s, a comprehensive review of the system was made to improve the national accounts. The recommendations which were formulated after the review stated that: The system should be rebased from 1959-60 to 1980-81; The system should be extended to include input-output tables, flow-of-funds and institutional sector accounts; and The system should adopt the integrated national accounts concepts.