Chairperson, with the few minutes allocated to me I will talk about the importance of statistics in the war against poverty. I was privileged to meet Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in the early 90s, who said:
Whatever we do we are guided by figures.
He is right, because the essential component of any development planning is data, and I must add, "the correct data". Without evidence-based data our country's efforts to plan future growth are flawed, because you lose contact with reality and your decisions become politically driven.
Therefore those who think money is not well-spent on the gathering of correct statistics are wrong. Statistics play a vital role in poverty reduction. That's why we do celebrate, together with the hon Minister today, that this debate about statistics is a stand-alone debate.
The power of correct statistics can be seen when you implement your policy frameworks based on correct data and it does, in fact, have a positive outcome. Reliable statistics describe the reality of people's lives. They tell us exactly where the poor are, why they are poor and how they are where they live. If we do not gather this correctly we are wasting money and time.
With this information you develop and monitor effective policies; and I do not think we are there yet in South Africa, but we must try for that. Good statistics highlight where resources are most needed. They provide transparency and accountability of policy-making and are essential for good governance.
Without good statistics, there cannot be effective delivery of basic services and therefore reduction of poverty. According to studies by PARIS21, a global partnership of statisticians, many developing countries still lack the capacity to produce quality statistics. May South Africa never be there.
We had a troublesome start to the new millennium as far as good, reliable statistics are concerned, and we shall probably never be able to quantify the damage that we have suffered because of unreliable statistics and the inability to produce good census figures.
If one adds these to the pre-1994 statistics, it becomes very important that we rectify this now and in the next five years. The problem is that poor countries cannot afford not to invest in reliable statistics, but so many times they do not invest.
Tadao Chino, the former Asian Development Bank President, said:
Sound data represent a key weapon in the battle against poverty.
In 2007, Statistics SA announced that South Africa will be committed to halving poverty by 2015, and that they would develop an official poverty line or indicator for South Africa. The hon Minister has mentioned that we are basically three years down the line. We want to know where exactly that process is. Has it been developed and the question is: Is it working?
The evidence we're getting from the ground is that the poverty indicator or line is really not out in the field and is not working. The idea of a poverty line is to monitor household vulnerability; we must know that.
It should not only address a measure of money - income required to attain a basic, minimal standard of living - but it must also monitor progress in poverty reduction. We still need to decide whether the Minister links this to the CPI, as he has mentioned that we are moving to a sort of different definition of CPI. Will it not be more appropriate specifically for a poverty line to link it to the price trends of a specific basket of a daily energy requirement per person?
Obviously it's moving, but don't we need to see two CPIs, one for poverty and one that we can use more in the microeconomic field? In March 2009, the Human Sciences Research Council published a paper on food security in South Africa on the question: What can be said about the food security status of South Africans? They have found the following: Firstly, there is little certainty about the household food security status, and we need better surveys to rectify this.
Secondly, there has been a dramatic fall in the experience of hunger since 2002, but undernutrition remains a serious problem.
Thirdly, food insecurity is chronic in this country. Policies that focus on poverty needs and in rural areas will not reach the largest number of those in need. Half of the households who are often or always hungry, are eligible but do not receive grants.
Do we know this, and if we do why do we not rectify it? The majority of small-scale farmers, they have found, are young people - the vulnerable youth of this country - and they have found a serious neglect of this group. That is why the HSRC wants an urgent food security target to be identified and announced by government.
They want government to establish a national system to monitor food security and Statistics SA, therefore, to include a special food security module in the general household survey. Cope will obviously support such an initiative.
The challenge is to develop a workable poverty indicator backed up by reliable and correct data. Therefore, it is essential that Statistics SA collects data regularly, maybe six times a year, to monitor the food basket and to ensure that the poverty line is sensitive to food security and household vulnerability. If they succeed, they will make a big contribution to the fight against poverty.
Cope wishes Statistics SA and the hon Minister all the best in this fight and we trust that he will, with the same energy that he has displayed as the Minister of Finance, do justice to Statistics SA for the wellbeing of all South Africans. Thank you. [Applause.]