Pakistan’s economic data have long been spread across statements, releases and reports from many different government agencies. The Economic Policy and Business Development (EPBD) Think Tank has now launched a free online “Pakistan Economic Dashboard” that brings more than 75 years of official economic and social statistics together on a single platform.

The dashboard covers ten subject areas, including GDP and real growth, the policy rate, the balance of payments, losses in the power sector and household living standards. It also contains a “Pakistan Scorecard” that ranks the country on governance and on economic and social indicators. EPBD says the platform also gathers long-term data on energy, prices, debt and trade.

Long-term comparisons of Pakistan’s economy are complicated by changes in methodology, base years and indices. The dashboard identifies these changes so that users can compare historical figures more accurately. EPBD says it has not chained series together where base years or definitions have changed, and it explains the choices made in compiling each historical series.

The think tank also says that none of the figures has been estimated, modelled or filled in, and that every number comes from official national sources. It publishes the underlying data alongside the charts. EPBD says the aim is to save researchers, policymakers, journalists and academics from having to reconcile figures from multiple official documents themselves.

The platform is designed to be easy to use. It is free, requires no subscription or registration, and is hosted as a self-contained page on EPBD’s website. According to the organisation, it makes no external requests, sets no cookies and stores nothing in the user’s browser, so it can be used on slow connections and shared computers.

The dashboard’s value will depend on whether its data are accurate and complete. EPBD has asked researchers, students, officials, practitioners and the public to report errors, inconsistencies and suggestions for improvement. If it proves reliable, the dashboard could make it much easier to study 75 years of Pakistan’s economic history.