Widening the confidence interval

ENAR

For Maral Tutelian, something is missing from the three year old debate about the economic impact of a proposed public sector wage increase: reliable statistics. The director general of the state’s Central Administration of Statistics (CAS) tells Executive, “It’s not a matter of point of view, it’s not a matter of guesstimation. Imagine all these discussions between the workers and the parliamentary committees [and] no one called me. Nobody asked for details.” Recent, reliable, and comprehensive data and statistics are fundamental for sound economic policymaking, as Minister of Finance Ali Hassan Khalil admitted in October during a meeting with representatives from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group. Yet, true as this may be, the Lebanese state is still a far cry from providing robust and quality numbers. Tutelian insists, however, that CAS is doing its best with what it has, with an eye on further reform. To do