A Consistent Series of National Accounts for East and West Pakistan: 1949-50 to 1969-70

The need for a consistent series of national income and related aggregates for East and West Pakistan, which are now separate countries, has been felt for a long time. Both the availability of data and the lack of willingness to make certain assumptions about the “controversial” items of income and expenditure have stood in the way of deriving such a series. Fortunately, however, the controversial items do not form a very significant part of the total and making alternative assumptions about the distribution does not change the pattern of growth of the different aggregates. The value and need for the series in the present context arises not so much for comparing the relative performance of the two economies at different points of time, but their rate of growth in the past. In this paper, we are presenting estimates of GDP at constant factor cost for East and West Pakistan from the years 1949-50 to 1969-70. From 1959-60 to 1969-70, it is also possible to present estimates of GNP at market prices and the distribution of GNP by expenditure categories, both at current and constant prices. In the first section we describe the method for obtaining GDP at constant factor cost from 1949-50 to 1969-70. In the second section, the methodology of obtaining GNP at market prices, current and constant, for 1959-60 to 1969-70 is presented. In the next section, we discuss the methodology of deriving the different national expenditure aggregates for 1959-60 to 1969-70.