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4.2.3 Financial resources for statistical services

77. In order to analyse the availability of financial resources and the Ministry’s
support to its statistical services, information such as the percentage of the Ministry’s
budget on its statistical units, costs of staff for statistical operations and administration
of these statistical units are to be identified. However, like other countries in the region,
this information is not readily and easily available in Bangladesh. It might be due to the
followings reasons:
• It might be possible that the heads of statistics units may not have direct
access to nor the decision-making role on the use of the budget devoted to
their units. This is the most frequent factor contributing to weaken the
professional and authoritative status of any statistics unit;

• Due to the bureaucratic procedures, it is also possible that the funds allocated
to statistical operations are not disbursed in substantial instalments or are
rarely or never disbursed within the fiscal year to allow the statistics units
prompt and proficient accomplishment of their work; and/or
• It may happen as well that the required skills to draw up realistic and
convincing budgets do not exist within these statistics units. In this situation,
there is more often a tendency of just replicating previous budgets, not taking
proper account of key parameters such us possible inelasticity of the
capabilities of existing manpower or existing facilities for data capture and
processing within a given time constraint while the number of schools for which
data is to be captured is increasing.

78. Regarding the external assistance to the EMIS development activities,
MOPME especially DPE has received financial and technical support from the World
Bank and DfID under the ESTEEM (PEDP I) project. During the project, the EMIS
system was developed and now a school census is being carried out annually. Starting
from the previous year, the GOB and developmental partners continued to support and
strengthen the EMIS activities of MOPME under the PEDP II programme.

79. UNESCO and UNDP assisted the EMIS activities of BANBEIS for the post-
primary education level, and the project ended in 2001. During the project, the EMIS
system and GIS school mapping system for post-primary education were developed in
BANBEIS. However, after the project, the Ministry was unable to incur the costs of the
EMIS activities. As a result, the data collection activities were delayed and the
production of yearbook was also subsequently delayed. In the absence of adequate
financing provided in the national budget, the collection of statistical information by
BANBEIS is still dependent on external developmental partners or projects.

80. At the same time, under the SISEP project, ADB has funded the DSHE to
develop the EMIS for the secondary education level. Although the project was
completed this year, the system is still under pilot stage, and sustainability and
continuity of it will be very much affected.

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