The first round of the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) will be held from October 1 this year to March 2020 at the national level, Vijay Kumar, director general, (National Sample Survey) National Statistical Office (NSO), has said.
The survey will cover the economic and operational characteristics of unorganised non-agricultural establishments engaged in manufacturing, trade and other services sectors.
The last such survey was conducted during July 2015-June 2016.
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Key role
The survey assumes significance as the unincorporated sector plays a vital role in the economy on account of the significant workforce it represents and its contribution to the GDP.
“This time the survey will be conducted using Computer Assisted Personalised Interviewing (CAPI) method using tablets. Employing IT tools for data collection/compilation will help NSO immensely in maintaining the quality of data and timely release of survey results in the public domain,” Mr. Vijay Kumar said here on Monday, inaugurating a three-day regional training camp for NSO field staff to equip them for the exercise.
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All except Andamans
All urban and rural regions of the country, except the remote villages of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, will be covered under the survey. At the all-India level, the total sample size will be 8,000 first stage units or FSUs, essentially census villages that are an operationally convenient and readily accessible frame.
In the urban areas, the basic unit is the Urban Frame Survey (UFS), where each town is divided into Investigator Units which are further split into UFS blocks.
“Reliable and authoritative data on this sector will help planning and policy formulation. It will also enable the National Accounts Division of the NSO to compute different components of national accounts,” Sunitha Bhaskar, Deputy Director General, NSO, regional office, Thiruvananthapuram, said. The first round of the survey, from October 2019 to March 2020, is further divided into two sub-rounds, from October to December and January to March.
The second round of ASUSE will last 12 months, from April 2020 to March 2021.
NSO was formed earlier this year by merging the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) with the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).
Results of 2015-16 survey
Key results from the 2015-16 survey had put the number of unincorporated non-agricultural enterprises in the country at 6.34 crore, of which 48.7% were in urban locations and 51.3% in rural areas.
Of these, manufacturing units accounted for 31%, trading 36.3% and other services 32.6%. In all, 84.2% of the enterprises were Own Account Enterprises (OAE) which did not employ any hired worker on a fairly regular basis.
Kerala’s share
Uttar Pradesh accounted for 14.2% of the total number of enterprises. Kerala accounted for 3.75%.
The share of workers in this sector in Kerala had stood at 4.04% of the total national figures in 2015-16.
From now now, the ASUSE is expected to be held annually.