Zimstat, formely the Central Statistical Office (CSO) has over the years come under attack for producing unreliable inflation data.
Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe said government had already committed US$13 million to strengthen statistical programmes this financial year.
The NSDS, which will run between 2011 and 2015, seeks to meet the need of statistics in the design and implementation of national and economic programmes.
“This will lead to the production of non-conflicting, reliable, sound, sector-linked, relevant, timely and development-focused official statistics,” Finance minister Tendai Biti said in a foreword to the document officially launched by Khupe.
Ministry of Economic Planning and Investment Promotion permanent secretary Desire Sibanda said the strategy would help in the engendering of evidence based policy formulation.
The African Development Bank (AfDB), World Bank and the African Capacity Building Foundation funded the design and development of the strategy.
Mahamudu Bawumia, the AfDB resident representative pledged that the regional institution would continue to help Zimbabwe strengthen its capacity to generate credible statistics.
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“Under the bank’s statistical capacity building programme, it has supported a number of statistical activities in Zimbabwe, including the design of the NSDS,” Bawumia said.
“Overall the bank’s statistical support to Zimbabwe covers a wide range of activities including the updating of its national accounts, improvement of its price statistics systems, supporting participation in the International Comparisons Program (ICP-Africa) just to name a few.”
He said the NSDS provides a sound basis for the design, management, monitoring and evaluation of government policies.
The AfDB this year intends to expand its activities in Zimbabwe to include assistance for improving infrastructure, labour and gender statistics.
