The International Monetary Fund (IMF), during a mission to Kuwait, has criticized several government institutions because data and statistics were not available to help understand the country’s economic policies.
The Al-Jarida daily has learned the two institutions that came for severe criticism were the Central Administration of Statistics and the Ministry of Finance, the first for not issuing monthly consumer price data on inflation for about 5 months and not issuing estimates of the quarterly GDP since the end of last year, and the second for not activating the work of the macroeconomic management and fiscal policy in the ministry, which was established in 2009 after an agreement between the Ministry of Finance and IMF, with the aim of setting up a mechanism for the main economic expectations in the short term, developing and maintaining a database for the ministry, and benefiting from economic data issued by those interested in macroeconomic analysis.
The sources attributed the failure of the ‘Statistics’ and ‘Finance’ to submit their reports on a regular basis to reasons, some of which are illogical, such as the excuse that the administration’s decision to dispense with incoming observers caused it to be impossible to issue inflation data, or the argument that there was lack of coordination between ‘Finance’ and the agencies related to economic data statisticians such as the Central Bank of Kuwait or the Public Authority Civil Information or “statistics” led to a stumbling block in the issuance of macroeconomic reports and financial policy, stressing that the failure in issuing economic data and statistics means that the decision maker is unable to issue economic decisions with clear or useful foundations.
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