ISLAMABAD: The Pakis­tan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Wednesday relea­sed a rebased index of large-scale manufacturing (LSM) industries.

However, the PBS did not announce whether the measurement of the LSM sector for November would be released on the new base or the old one.

Normally, the PBS relea­sed LSM data before the middle of a month.

According to the PBS, the number of items has been increased to 123 from 112 in the new index. The new items have been added while obsolete items were removed from the list.

The second major change was assigning new weights for a quantum index of manufacturing (QIM) — the base index for measures of LSM.

The QIM measures the changes in production over time on both monthly and cumulative bases. At present, the weights used for the QIM were derived from the Census of Manufac­turing Industries (CMI) 2005-06. However, new weights were determined on the CMI of 2015-16.

The production data is collected from the Oil Com­panies Advisory Council (OCAC), the Ministry of Industries and Production (MOIP) and the provincial bureaus of statistics (BoS).

The number of items of OCAC and MOIP remained the same at 36 and 11, respectively, in the rebased QIM. However, new items were added to provincial BoS lists which increased to 76 from 65 items.

As a result of these changes, the weightages for MOIP have dropped to 40.54pc from 49.56, while for the OCAC it has slightly increased to 6.66pc from 5.41pc under the revised base. The weightage for the provincial BoS has risen to 31.17pc from 15.37pc.

The rebased QIM has been computed for 2016-17 to 2020-21 with 123 items, having the total weight of 78.4pc. The data collected from all the existing sources with the addition of the PBS internal source for wearing apparel, towel, furniture and football has been used for computing the new QIM.

According to the PBS, manufacturing is a key part of the economy. It is traditionally decomposed into LSM, small-scale manufacturing and slaughtering industries.

The current QIM is rebased on the results of CMI 2015-16.

To capture these changes, the CMI is imperative on a regular basis. It takes into account the new developments in the industrial field, capture new industrial products and establishments and develop new weights for the QIM.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2022