An independent think tank and the World Bank on Monday criticised the Ghana National Statistical System (NSS) for failing to live up to requirements under the Statistical Service Law and losing the confidence of the donor community.

"The NSS publishes things that do not inform the people about conditions affecting them and has failed to set standards for private data collection firms," said Dr. Joe Abbey, Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Analysis.

World Bank Country Director Peter Harold said: "donor partners have lost a lot of confidence in the Service itself and are worried about the benefits of their support". As a result of concerns about the misuse of their money, donors are only supporting specific projects rather than NSS-initiated and supervised projects, Harold said.

The attack came at a forum organised by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to commemorate this year's annual Africa Statistics Day under the theme "Poverty reduction: strengthening statistical capacity for measuring and monitoring poverty."

Dr Abbey cited unsatisfactory NSS statistics on labour, environment, gender, investment and tourism. He said the NSS statistical publications show little information on how such findings affect ordinary Ghanaians.

"There are too many agencies churning out data but they require the GSS to set standards for people to judge the accuracy and acceptability of data and how they are arrived at."

Abbey stressed the need for statisticians to "have an intuitive feel to be able to go beyond figures appearing on computer screens and analyse their implications". He said conditions attached to poverty alleviation grants could benefit both parties on the basis of "mutuality".

This is because when developing countries "actually use" such grants as required and poverty is reduced, donors would no longer have to cope with economic refugees going to their countries.

Harold said the World Bank is ready to work with the NSS to build its capacity if it acts "to recreate the confidence of donor partners". He urged the NSS to create programmes that the donor community would be ready to support, adding that it should make available its printed reports on its web site, compact discs and diskettes.

The NSS, he added, should refrain from leaving data collection in the hands of special interests that might compromise the accuracy and objectivity of the findings for personal gain.