AfricaPress-Tanzania: MINISTER for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango, has laid the foundation stone for a National Statistics (NBS), office building in Kigoma and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to continuing strengthening the production and dissemination of reliable statistics in the country.
He said the fifth phase government led by President John Magufuli was always ensuring those entrusted with various responsibilities in the government and its institutions served in an enabling environment and discharged their duties as expected.
“This office building is one of those efforts to ensure we create an enabling working environment that leads to expected results like quality statistics of the NBS staff,” he said.
In his speech, Dr Mpango stressed the importance of quality statistics in planning, monitoring and implementation of plans and programmes and commended NBS for providing the government and other stakeholders with quality statistics.
“Without quality statistics we can’t measure our progress and that is why with available statistics we have managed to measure and identify all achievements we have so far attained during the fifth phase government,” he stressed.
Dr Mpango lauded respondents in various statistical surveys and censuses for collaboration during data collection by providing correct statistical information according to questions posed by data collectors.
“Respondents who are mostly normal citizens are key to the production of quality statistics. I salute them and recognise their contribution which has made Tanzania one of the few countries in Africa that produce quality statistics,” he noted.
He directed the statistician general to ensure the construction of the building was completed in September this year and vowed to ensure the funds set for the work were availed to the national statistics office during the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020/21.
For her part, NBS Governing Board chairperson, Dr Amina Msengwa, thanked the fifth phase government for issuing 700m/-for finishing the construction of the building which started in 1994, thanks to support from Statistics Sweden.
Speaking at the event at the weekend, Statistician General, Dr Albina Chuwa, emphasised that such infrastructure was important as it helped in adapting modern technologies in data collection and dissemination.
“Adoption of new technologies is important because it helps us to reduce cost of production and dissemination of statistics products” She insisted.
