A DRAFT amendment to China’s Statistics Law will make officials and their supervisors directly accountable for data accuracy and also increase the ceiling on fines for companies that report false information.

The draft amendment was published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday on its website, with the bureau calling for feedback until Nov. 9, according to a statement.

If passed, the amendment would mean statistics agencies at the county level and above have to set up an accountability mechanism to prevent fake data, and punish those responsible as well as their bosses. It will also raise a ceiling on fines for companies that report inaccurate or incomplete data to 500,000 yuan (US$70,000) from 200,000 yuan under the current law.

Anyone committing “dereliction of duty” should be “held accountable and responsible leaders and the people directly responsible should be called to account for data fabrication,” the draft amendment said. It added that the government department appointing the officials or the country’s discipline watchdog should hold people accountable if they “shelter or connive in” illegal activities, tip off law breakers or fail to implement appropriate data standards.

China has “zero tolerance for any manipulation of statistics, and will strictly crack down on it,” the head of the NBS, Ning Jizhe, said in an interview last year.

(SD-Agencies)