Overview
Official statistics become even more important during periods of crisis. Governments, institutions, researchers and the public require timely and reliable information to understand rapidly changing economic and social conditions. At the same time, crises can seriously weaken the data sources, operational capacity and fieldwork conditions needed to produce these statistics.
The paper Quality under Pressure: Maintaining the Quality of Official Statistics in Lebanon During Economic Crisis and War presents the experience of the Central Administration of Statistics in addressing this challenge.
It examines two cases in which exceptional circumstances required important methodological decisions: the compilation of National Accounts during a period of severe economic and exchange-rate instability, and the implementation of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey under conflict-related security constraints.
Measuring the economy amid multiple exchange rates
Lebanon's economic crisis created a fragmented exchange-rate system in which official, subsidized and parallel market rates coexisted. This presented a major statistical challenge because the exchange rate used to value transactions directly affects GDP, sectoral value added, external accounts and the comparability of economic statistics.
To address this issue, the National Accounts methodology sought to approximate the exchange rates applied to actual economic transactions. A unitary exchange rate was calculated using import-based weights, while exchange-rate differences were treated consistently as implicit taxes and subsidies.
These methodological choices were accompanied by clear documentation of the data sources, assumptions, valuation methods and revisions used in producing the estimates.
Protecting the validity of survey results
The war also created significant challenges for the implementation of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. Fieldwork could not be completed in three governorates, meaning that the planned national sample was not fully covered.
Producing national estimates under these conditions could have introduced substantial bias. CAS therefore published results only for the governorates where data collection had been successfully completed and recalculated the sampling weights for the covered areas.
The survey was presented as the Sub-national Lebanon Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, clearly reflecting the geographic scope of the available results. The incomplete coverage and its implications for interpreting the findings were also fully documented.
Quality does not always mean completeness
The two cases illustrate an important lesson: during exceptional circumstances, preserving statistical quality may require accepting limitations in coverage, timeliness or data availability.
Producing complete figures is not necessarily the best option when the underlying information is insufficient or could lead to misleading conclusions. In such situations, methodological soundness, analytical validity and transparent communication must take priority.
The Lebanese experience demonstrates that statistical quality can be maintained during periods of extreme uncertainty when methodological adaptations remain aligned with international standards and are clearly explained to users.