Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics

Bangladesh has a centralized official statistical system named Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). After independence in December 1971, Bangladesh owned a weak and disintegrated and disorganized official statistical system. There were many agencies engaged in statistical data generation, dissemination but they were working independently of each other having little co- ordination among them often resulting in duplication, inadequacy. Data generated by them were inadequate and in many areas incomplete and as such, could not provide satisfactory basis for formulation of plans and policies for the new nation. Consequently, need for an integrated national official statistical system, was urgently felt. The then Govt realizing the pressing need undertook some initiative to streamline the data collection system in this new born country.

Accordingly in August 1974, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) was created by the government by merging four relatively larger statistical agencies of the erstwhile provincial and central governments, namely, the Bureau of Statistics, the Bureau of Agriculture Statistics, the Agriculture Census Commission and the Population Census Commission.  
A Director General was also appointed by the government to head the BBS and a follow-up plan for reorganizing the bureau into an efficient centralized national institution in the field of official statistics was undertaken.