Seventh Economic Census launched in U.T.

Mobile application to be employed for data collection and processing

Going digital: Minister A. Namassivayam launching the mobile app for the economic census on Friday.

Launching the seventh Economic Census in Puducherry on Friday, Minister for Public Works A. Namassivayam stressed the need for gathering proper data about the economic activity of people for effective implementation of schemes.

He said the government relies on statistics, especially related to socio-economic conditions, to plan for future. Planning of schemes would become more effective with availability of accurate data, he added.

R. Ramakrishnan, Director, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, said the Economic Census Division, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation carried out economic census every five years. The survey was to find out the economic activity in a specific area, he added. The seventh census would witness the use of Information Technology for data collection. The enumerators and supervisors engaged by the Common Service Centres have been trained to collect data on a mobile application developed for data gathering, validation, report generation and dissemination.

“Economic census is the complete count of all establishments located within the geographical boundary of India. The economic census provided disaggregated information on various operational and structural variables of all establishments of the country,” a release from the Department said.

According to the sixth Economic Census, 59,152 establishments were found to be operation in the Union Territory of which 17,759, were in rural areas and the remaining 41,393 in urban areas. The establishments together employed 2,19,378 persons. Out of the total employed, 68,744 were working in rural and 1,50,634 in urban localities.

Fifth census

As per the last survey, employment growth rate since 2005 (Fifth Economic Census), was about 12.7%. The manufacturing sector alone employed 57,910 people, retail trade 38,566 workers and livestock sector employed 5,225 persons.

Secretary, Economics and Statistics, Padma Jaiswal, Deputy Director General, NSO, Government of India S. Durai Raju and Vinod Kuriakose, State Head Operations, CSC e-governance were among those present.