Demand Supply Gap In Information Widening

Dr RitiIbrahim, in conversation with Dhaka Courier, also sees discrepancy in sources of industrial data.

Information has become one of the most sellable things in modern business, with Bangladesh still lagging behind, leaving the gap between the demand and the supply to widen further. A former secretary to the Statistics and Information Division of the Ministry of Planning said that the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) as the only mandated government agency to collect and disseminate official data could emerge as a major source of marketing information products. In an interview with Dhaka Courier, she said that the BBS should have a user-friendly method to sell data and improve on its publicity to join the national and the international market.

A statistician, who has spent two decades in the country’s statistical system, collecting, compiling, analysing and disseminating data, RitiIbrahim knows that a very few of the clients are aware of what she thinks about the data the BBS generates. She said that the BBS that she once worked for and led has an elaborate mechanism in place. The BSS has a nationwide network with manpower posted to different parts of the country.

‘The BBS can sell its raw data and enter into contracts with many national and international organisations and academics interested in researching Bangladesh’s social and economic development such as poverty eradication and social safety net programmes,’ she said adding that the BBS could sell its data by simplifying the existing procedure, which is not user-friendly.