THE HAGUE, 11/07/08 - The Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) fails to produce a rapid and correct picture of the development of the Dutch economy. As a result, government policy is based on unreliable data.

Last week, the CBS announced it had revised its economic growth estimates for 2005 and 2006 - Dutch GDP growth was much higher than originally thought. The same thing happened earlier for 2003 and 2004.

The Central Planning Bureau (CPB) is the most important body for the government in drawing up its budgetary policy. The CPB bases itself largely on CBS figures in drawing up its forecasts.

Johan Verbruggen, head of the CPB's Economic Climate department, complained in Het Financieele Dagblad yesterday about the changeable CBS figures. "We are as a result regularly put on the wrong foot. Our projections are as a result less accurate."

In 2005, Dutch GDP growth was not 1.5 percent but 2.0 percent, CBS said last week. Additionally, the growth figure was initially estimated by the CBS at only 0.9 percent, a difference of no less than 1.1 percentage point. Growth in 2006 also turns out to have been higher; according to the latest information this was not 2.9 but 3.4 percent.

The CBS figures can be revised for up to two and a half years after the end of a calendar year. For the 2003 and 2004 years, now closed, the revision was as in 2005 about a full percentage point.

At the CPB, the too low estimates mainly work through in the forecasts for the current year. "If the CBS's actualisation figures for the recent quarters are also wrong, this affects our powers of prediction and accuracy nearly one-on-one," according to Verbruggen. "It has to be improved."

Fortis Bank chief economist Guy Verberne also complained in the newspaper. "This makes the work of an economist ridiculous. You give a commentary on something, and this turns out afterwards to have been nonsense. In this way, we are propounding fairy-tales."