ADB & PRC to capture domestic services for economic growth
29 Sep '06
2 min read
ADB and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have worked closely to develop a robust statistical survey method to capture more accurately the contribution of fast expanding domestic services sector in overall economic growth.
The statistical reporting system in the PRC has traditionally focused on the production of goods and has tended to ignore most services.
The traditional statistical reporting system fails to capture growth in some of the fast expanding service industries like real estate agents, firms renting construction equipment, business consultants and companies providing communication and software services.
The ADB project helped in developing sample survey methodologies for accurately measuring the size of the services sector.
The PRC's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Beijing Municipal statistical bureau successfully implemented in 2005 a survey of service enterprises in the Beijing region.
“The NBS plans to extend sample surveys of the main types of services to other provinces so that the growth of the PRC's tertiary sector can be properly tracked between periodic census,” said Bishnu Pant, Assistant Chief Economist at ADB.
The past two comprehensive Census of the services or “tertiary” sector showed that the share of services sector in overall gross domestic product (GDP) was greatly underestimated.
Using the improved survey methodology, the 1992 value added in services had to be revised upwards by 33 percent and GDP by 9 percent.
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