In a rather embarrassing turn of event, it has emerged that the statistics provided by the Ghana Statistical Service on the country's growth rate for the second-quarter was wrong.

According to a report by Reuters, the Ghana's statistics office on Monday had the embarrassing assignment of revising downward the country's "second-quarter growth rate to 16.4 percent on-year from 33.5 percent announced last month", explaining that the correction was prompted by "discrepancies" it discovered in the previous calculation.

"The year-on-year real GDP growth of the second quarter of 2011 was 16.4 percent," Ghana's statistic office said in a statement. "The earlier release of Sept. 22 was reviewed to correct discrepancies in the aggregates. Eight of the 20 sub-sectors that were affected by the review are Livestock, Mining and Quarrying, Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport and Storage, Education and Health," it said.

According to the report, the Statistical Service also revised Ghana's quarter-on-quarter GDP to a negative 3.1 percent in the second quarter from a fall 4.3 percent as previously announced.

Nana Atobrah Quaicoe, Head of Research of the Danquah Institute, has described the development as very embarrassing and disgraceful to the nation.

He told the new Statesman yesterday that he was particularly worried about the negative signal it sends about the kind of information provided by the Statistical Service to inform policy formulation.

"This is a serious embarrassment because it is not good for our international image and also casts doubt about the kind of statistics being provided by the Statistical Service to inform policy formulation."

Nana Atobrah added: "The implication of churning out wrong statistics is very serious and I think the Service will have to sit up and provide accurate statistics to guide policy formulation. If the problem has to do with lack of adequate resources, the government and all of us as a nation should find ways of helping them to get the right kind of resources for effective discharge of their mandate."

An economist said this of the GSS error, "Revisions are standard practice in reporting GDP. Usually, there are 'preliminary' figures based on limited data; as more data becomes available, the preliminary figures are then revised. Truth be told, they are also one of the most under-resourced government agencies in Ghana. The core work is one by a handful of people. We can choose to resource them and get the best statistics, or spend our monies on BMW 7 Series on roads that even donkeys would be reluctant to tread!"