June 06, Colombo: Participating in the opening session of a workshop on Data-based Statistics for Administration, State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe said responding successfully to challenges and shocks, Sri Lanka’s future decision-making can only be done on the basis of data and statistics.

Minister Semasinghe today inaugurated the High Level meeting on “ Unlocking the power of administrative data for producing official statistics” at the Ministry of Finance with the support and collaboration the Department of Census and Statistics has received from the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs and the United Nations Statistics Division.

“In addition, while making decisions, numbers are critical to understand where we stand and where we need to position our ourselves in the way forward and Sri Lanka’s future will be on evidence-based decision-making that will make it possible to respond adequately to internal or external shocks,” the Minister said.

Semasinghe pointed out the Lack of a commonly accessible system, that not integrated is a main cause for unavailability or underutilization of data. He emphasized that introducing a common inter-inked administrative record base with real time update should be a priority.

State Minister Semasinghe also pointed out that moving forward, if there are requirements for new laws or regulations to be introduced or amendments to the existing laws, the government is ready to facilitate such requirements.