Govt to spend Rs 800 cr on Economic Census next year

The government today said it will spend Rs 800 crore for the Sixth Economic Census to be conducted from April to November 2012 to update the data on industrial activity across the country for better micro-level planning and policy formulation.

"The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has planned to spend Rs 800 crore for conducting the Sixth Economic Census as a Central Sector Plan Scheme during April to November, 2012", Statistics Minister Srikant Kumar Jena told reporters here.

The census would involve collection of data from entrepreneurial units in the country. The ministry will engage 800,000 enumerators for the census, he added.

The data will be collected on major industrial activity of units, number of workers, ownership details, major source of finance, gender, religion as well as social groups of the owner for proprietary units among others, for formulating micro level plans and policies.

Inaugurating the all India conference of planning secretaries of states and union territories and the directors of directorate of economic and statistics here, Jena emphasised upon the need for intensive training arrangements for enumerators and supervisors to ensure the quality of primary data.

The minister said the data at the lower geographical levels like tehsil and villages in rural areas and wards in the urban areas, would also be a valuable input for local level planning required under the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments.

The last economic census was conducted in 2005. The Sixth Economic Census was to be conducted in 2011 as it is done after every five years, but was rescheduled due to capacity constraints.

"At present, our people are engaged in conducting Socio-Economic and Caste-Economic Census. It is the same machinery for every census. Therefore, economic census will be conducted next year," Chief Statistician T C A Anant told reporters when asked about delay in conducting the census.

Anant also said that there will be a National Business Register which would have details about the entrepreneurs at village and ward levels.