Firms revise targets on the back of ‘doubtful’ government data
View(s):While most firms don’t rely on government data, those who do believe them are revising their growth projection forecasts on the back of fresh allegations against state departments ‘cooking’ data, according to some top company officials.
“Most companies have always been sceptical on data dished out by state authorities. We do our own projections and as for the numbers issued by the Central Bank (CB,) they are totally unreliable as was recently revealed. Therefore we revised some of our data according to our own projections,” a top corporate official told the Business Times.
The CB on Tuesday strongly rejected claims that economic data was inaccurate accusing those who made these claims as having political agendas. Senior officials of the Department of Census and Statistics also told reporters on Wednesday that their data is accurate and based on a set of international standards.
In the meantime a large hotel operator, while dismissing the recent Tourist Board statistics revision as a mere 5 per cent difference said that that they’re being more careful in their targets for this year. “There’s an overhang on the credibility of these numbers. This may be a reason why some operators had to cut their room rates in order to attract local tourists,” he said.
Another top hotel operator added that unreliable data is a dangerous trend and that from this year onwards they’ll be doing their own data collection. “We’ll be relying on our own occupancy levels,” he said.
A large clothes manufacturer said that they changed their budgets after learning that CB data could be inaccurate. A top banker said, “We do our own analysis. We need to walk the track on our own,” adding that they ‘never’ relied on government data.