ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: The Governing Council of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics on Monday approved policy for preparing quarterly national accounts and rebasing them after every 10 years.

An official announcement issued after the meeting, headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, said the governing council took a policy decision that unlike the past practice of preparing annual accounts, the PBS will now prepare quarterly national accounts (QNA), whose report will be submitted to the government.

Quarterly national accounts constitute a system of integrated quarterly time series coordinated through an accounting framework. This framework helps in policy planning and economic analysis.

A policy decision has also been taken that rebasing of National Accounts would be carried out after every 10 years. The next rebasing is due in 2015-2016, while the subsequent rebasing would be done in 2025.

Chief Statistician Asif Bajwa informed the Council that the PBS is in the process of updating Enumeration Blocks (EB) in the country. He informed the council that upgrading of most of the urban areas had been completed.

Out of the 52,000 Urban Blocks, the work of marking boundaries of 48,000 urban area blocks had already been completed and 31.5pc of the data in these EBs have been digitalised.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics is responsible for collecting, compiling and disseminating socio-economic, demographic and agricultural data through census and surveys.

The meeting of the Governing Council was attended by Secretary Statistics Division, Gujrat University Vice Chancellor Professor M. Nizamud Din, Population Council’s Country Director Dr Zeba A. Sathar, Lahore School of Economics’ Professor Dr Naved Hamid, Economist Dr Eshya Mujahid Mukhtar, International Institute of Islamic Economics Director General Dr Asad Zaman and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance.