Statistics plays a key role in planning, monitoring and evaluation of socio-economic policies and improving governance, Union Minister D V Sadananda Gowda said today.
"Availability of good data during the implementation process ensures the effective control on delivery of various public services and thus results in good governance," said the Union Minister of Statistics & Programme Implementation.
Gowda was speaking at the inauguration function of 24thCOCSSO (Conference of Central and State Statistical Organisation), organised by Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation in collaboration with Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Maharashtra Government.
The theme of this year's conference is 'Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare'.
Stressing on the significance of statistics, Gowda said, "The importance of statistics has been growing rapidly with the greater integration and inter-dependence of world economies, which is also evident from burgeoning data demands both at national and international levels.
"Local level statistics have immense significance for understanding the socio-economic reality and thereby appropriate policy formulation."
"The statistics on infrastructure, health, educational facilities and socio-economic conditions of society are essential to cater to the needs of planning and policy formulation at Sub-State levels.
"In such a scenario, interaction between the Central and State Governments in a federal set up like ours becomes very important," the Minister added.
Gowda said in the recent past, his Ministry has taken a number of new initiatives to switch over from traditional ways of data collection and storage to digital and smart methods.
Online data collection of Consumer Price Index, Index of Industrial Production is also being done in efficient manner. Taking importance of services sector in Indian economy into consideration, a focused survey on the segment is being incorporated in the 74th round of NSS during 2016-17, he said.
Maharashtra Minister for Finance and Planning Sudhir Mungantiwar said the Statistics Department is giving proper direction in terms of agriculture statistics.
He appealed to farmers to take production of crops which have demand in international markets.
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