Statistics office set for change

Director to be replaced by finance ministry official, Bloomberg reports

National Bureau of Statistics Director Ma Jiantang is expected to leave his post and be replaced by a current vice-finance minister, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

An employee in the NBS press office declined to deny the report and told China Daily to wait for a public announcement, which may be posted online soon.

Ma, 57, has been the NBS chief since 2008. He will become the vice-director of the Chinese Academy of Governance, an official training school under the State Council, China's cabinet, which keeps him at a minister's rank. The appointment was announced on the academy's website on Wednesday.

The current director of the academy is State Councilor Yang Jing.

Ma, who holds a doctorate in economics, was vice-governor of Qinghai province from 2004 to 2008. He was elected as a member of 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In 2008, the first year of Ma's tenure at the NBS, about 17,300 cases of statistical fraud were investigated.

While at the NBS, he pledged to accelerate the launch of a uniform system of calculating GDP growth at the sub-national level. Inflated figures compiled by local governments have often led to cases where the aggregate figures of provincial-level regions exceeded the national total.

A draft of the reform is still awaiting State Council approval.

Ma also promised to adopt the International Monetary Fund's Special Data Dissemination Standard next year to enhance the availability of timely and comprehensive economic and financial data.

In 2012, he promoted the establishment of an online database to collect information directly from more than 700,000 enterprises, so as to improve the accuracy of the official data. And last year, he led the third national economic census.

"Fraudulent data is the worst corruption of statistics," Ma often said.

The last time Ma appeared in public as NBS director was in January, when he held a news conference at which he announced that GDP growth last year fell to a 24-year low of 7.4 percent.

Vice Finance Minister Wang Baoan, 52, will be the new NBS director, reported Bloomberg.

Wang, who has no experience related to statistics, has held his post since February 2012. He previously served as assistant finance minister for three years.

Both officials are members of the monetary policy committee of the People's Bank of China, according to the central bank's official website.