The Statistical Service has justified its review of the economic figures it puts out. Economic Think-Tank, the Centre for Policy Analysis, CEPA in a recent report criticized the service for the frequent changes and sometimes withdrawal of published data on account of errors and omissions. According to the centre, this rather raises questions about the service’s credibility. But the Head of National Accounts and Economic Indicators at the service Bernice Ofosu-Badu tells JOY BUSINESS the revision is in line with international best practice. “We should know that when we say provisional or revised estimates, unlike final estimates, they are subject to change. And we cannot wait until say 2013 before we finalize 2012 GDP because as the year goes by we need figures to prepare our policies. For instance government would need some provisional figures as it sets out to prepare the budget and so we cannot wait” he said. GDP estimates put out by the Statistical Service go through three stages namely provisional, revised and final. The figures are said to be provisional when the service uses about 70 percent of data for the computation, revised when 95 percent is used and final when 100 percent. Meanwhile, Madam Ofosu-Badu agrees with CEPA’s arguments that the economy could grow more than the initial projection of 7.1 percent for this year. “As far as we are concerned, the 7.1 is the change over the 2011 figures which you can easily see that the percentage of oil contribution was much higher. But the provisional figure for 2012 has shown that the production of oil has declined by more than 10 percent. So it might be the cause and so its subject to revision if perhaps the production increases in the 1st quarter” he said.