4th Economic Census to be conducted this year to determine structural change in economy

The 4th Economic Census would be conducted in the country in this year in a bid to have insights about the structural change in the country's economy with the passage of time.

The 4th edition of the Economic Census would be conducted under the Economic Census 2023 project which is under implementation from 1 July 2023 to 31 December 2025 with an estimated cost of Tk579.52 crore to be entirely borne from the state coffer. 

The administrative approval to the project was given on 1 October 2023. 

In this regard, an inception workshop on the project was held today at the auditorium of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in the capital.

Presided over by BBS Director General Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Dr Shahnaz Arefin spoke at the workshop as the chief guest while General Economics Division (GED) Chief and additional secretary Khan Md Nurul Amin spoke as special guest.

BBS deputy director general Parimal Chandra Bose gave the address of welcome while project director of the Economic Census 2023 SM Shakil Akhter made a power-point presentation on the overall aspects of the project. Joint Secretary of BBS Dr Dipankar Roy moderated the question and answer session.

Country's first Economic Census was conducted in 1986, the 2nd in 2001 and in 2003, while the 3rd Economic Census in 2013.

Under the project, the preparatory works of the Economic Census like first zonal operation and mapping operation, formulation of the list of economic units, finalization of census workers for 2nd zonal operation, formulation of the questionnaire for the main census, pre-testing and pilot census would be
done from January-October, 2024.

The main operations of the Economic Census would be conducted in November-December, 2024 under which data will be collected under the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) method while the post census operations would be conducted from January to December next year.

The mapping operation of the Economic Census will be conducted in May while the list of all the households and enterprises would be done in June this year.

Speaking on the occasion as the chief guest, Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Dr Shahnaz Arefin urged all concerned to make the operations of this Economic Census a success like the last Population and Housing Census.

She also suggested the BBS to give more efforts in rolling out the National Business Registrar to know about the current state of the business establishments and enterprises of the country.

The Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary also opined for involving the academicians of different public and private universities as well as media to make the operations of the Economic Census a success.

GED Chief Khan Md Nurul Amin said that this Economic Census would enrich the database of the state and thus would be helpful in the planning process of future government operations.

In order to conduct the field-level operations of the Economic Census, the whole country has been divided into 130 census districts and 2,600 zones while some 130 district census coordinators, 500 upazila/thana census coordinators and 2,600 zonal officers have already been selected.

The indicators which are expected to be available from the census are total number of establishments, total number of establishments by major economic activities, establishments head by sex, ownership status, registration status, inception period, mode of sales, accounting system, establishments by category, total persons engaged by sex, total persons engaged by resident status, current fixed assets, type of fuel used in manufacturing, machinery used in manufacturing, status of TIN numbers, working status of persons engaged.