Newly appointed Government Statistician, Dr. Alhassan Iddrisu, has pledged to ensure that Ghana’s data ecosystem becomes a robust pillar of national development, promising to provide accurate, timely, and relevant statistics to support government initiatives and policy direction.
Speaking during his swearing-in ceremony at the Jubilee House on Friday, May 2, Dr. Iddrisu assured President John Dramani Mahama of the Ghana Statistical Service’s (GSS) unwavering commitment to backing the administration’s economic recovery and growth plans with credible data.
“We are committed to delivering credible, timely, and relevant data to support our macroeconomic stabilization programme and our socioeconomic development agenda, including flagship initiatives we’ve introduced such as the 24-hour economic policy, the agriculture for transformation agenda, the Adwumawura programme, the national apprenticeship programme, the national coders programme, and the anti-corruption drive as we just emphasized,” Dr. Iddrisu said.
He added that beyond tracking existing programmes, the service will take a proactive stance in anticipating the data demands of a rapidly changing economy and a population with forward-thinking ambitions.
Dr. Iddrisu outlined several new statistical initiatives, including reforms to the way inflation data is reported. “Currently, inflation ends at the regional level. This will support the decentralisation agenda of the government and will inform inflation policy at the district level,” he noted.
He also disclosed plans to generate Consumer Price Index (CPI) and inflation data that disaggregate between rural and urban areas, providing a more nuanced understanding of inflation’s impact across the country.
Addressing Ghana’s GDP reporting, the new Statistician announced steps toward refining national economic measurements: “Your Excellency, on economic activities, we will, one, fast-track the rebasing of GDP data to make our GDP statistics more accurate and relevant.
“We will call for institutionalisation of rebasing of our GDP every five years to make our GDP data more relevant and to meet global standards.”
