The national Construction Industry Council (NCIC) and the National Statistics Office (NSO) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding at a ceremony which took place at the NSO Head Office in Zomba today.
Through the MOU, the two institutions have agreed to collaborate on collection and analysis of data for the Construction Industry, and production and dissemination of reports on the same in order to achieve consistency and efficiency in the National Statistical System.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, Commissioner for Statistics, Mrs. Lizzie Chikoti, noted that partnerships and MOUs are useful tools in service delivery. She therefore lauded the MOU between NCIC and NSO as a timely arrangement that will help their institution to surmount some of the challenges that have being standing in the way of timely production and dissemination of Producer Price Index (PPIs), and enable her institution cover wider aspects of the construction industry. PPIs is a family of indexes that measures the average change over time in selling prices received by domestic producers of goods and services.
On his part Chief Executive officer for NCIC, Eng. Gerald Khonje, expressed his excitement with the development saying that it speaks to the new strategic direction of NCIC which, among other things, talks about Strategic Partnerships as one of the key drivers to achieving a “Transformed, sustainable and quality driven Construction Industry”. He noted that that the Council’s pursuit for Quality Infrastructure has been hampered by, among other things, lack of reliable statistics pertaining to movements in the prices of construction inputs as a result of movements in the macro-economy. He therefore expressed hope that this partnership will greatly assist industry players through use of quality and legitimate data that will be collected and published on Construction Cost Indexes by the two institutions.
The National Statistics Office was established under the National Ststics Act (Cap 27:01), of the Laws of Malawi with a mandate for collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction, publication and dissemination of official statistics. It is also a central repository of official statistics produced in Malawi.
On its part, the National Construction Industry Council was established under the National Construction Industry Act (Cap 53:05) of the Laws of Malawi for the promotion, development and regulation of the construction industry in Malawi.