Government blames Opposition for NSO head's resignation

The Government yesterday blamed the Opposition for the resignation of Gordon Cordina as head of the National Statistics Office.

Dr Cordina was appointed to head the NSO last August and was recently in the eye of a storm over the way official statistics were revised.

The government accused the Opposition of turning a technical and academic discussion into "personal attacks and persecution".

"These personal attacks have caused the NSO to lose the services of a very competent person," the government said.

Dr Cordina said he had always gone about his duties with integrity and professionalism and the board of the Statistics Authority had always confirmed its confidence in him.

"The personal attacks by the Labour Opposition in the past few weeks show that, despite what it says, it has not changed," the government said.

Earlier the Malta Statistics Authority said it had received a detailed technical report from the NSO explaining the revisions made to statistics on the Gross Domestic Product and asked the NSO to publish it on its Website.

The explanations were given after the MLP earlier this month published its own report in reaction to the GDP figures published on December 7.

The authority said it had no option but to accept Dr Cordina's resignation, but said it continued to have full confidence in him.

In its technical report the NSO said revisions to the GDP data for the past few years must be seen in the context of the NSO's commitment to Eurostat following Malta's accession to the EU. Such regular revisions would include: revisions occasioned by the availability of updated data; reclassifications of data units; inclusion of new data sources; and methodological changes that reflect new developments in the economy as well as developments in statistical practices. Eurostat, it said, was fully aware of these developments.

The NSO said the principal conclusions, which emerged from its report were that:

• The revisions effected in the latest National Accounts News Release are in line with normal statistical practices and the ongoing work programme at the NSO, which aims to produce a time series of National Accounts Statistics at current prices starting in 1995, and to finalise data up to 2003 after the first quarter of 2007.

• The revisions do not significantly alter the picture concerning the economic development of the country over the medium term, nor the fiscal performance ratios.

• One of the principal reasons behind the revisions was the availability of new information, emanating in part from the ongoing exercise to update structural business statistics, which led to revisions across the entire time series of data. Other new information from survey and administrative sources also led to revisions, especially for recent reference periods.

• Revisions in relation to reference periods further into the past in part reflect the fact that the NSO has recently embarked upon compiling ESA95-based data for these reference periods.

The NSO said that in addition to this report, further technical details on the method of deriving output, intermediate consumption, capital consumption and profits are described in the GNI Inventory of Sources and Methods submitted to Eurostat in December following four years of work on the inventory. At the moment this GNI inventory is restricted to the members of the GNI committee, but Eurostat plans to put the inventories on the publicly accessible part of its Website.

The NSO said that as already mentioned in its press conference of December 29, data for the periods 1995 to 2003 will be finalised and published in March.

Asked to comment about the resignation, Opposition Leader Alfred Sant said this was an indication of how correct the MLP's criticism was.

He said MLP deputy leader Charles Mangion and himself would be discussing the issue, including the NSO's reaction to the Labour Party's report at their formal meeting today.