The Statistician General of the Federation/Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Dr. Yemi Kale, on Thursday disclosed that 1.4 million establishments had been captured in the first phase of the ongoing National Survey of Establishment (NSE) being conducted by the agency nationwide.
Dr. Kale, who gave the hint during a media briefing on the exercise at the NBS headquarters in Abuja, said that the NSE survey, being supported by the World Bank, would enable the agency to produced an updated data on business entities in the country so that such data could help the businesses and governments on planning and adopting the right policies for sustainable development of the real sector.
Giving a background to the survey, the Statistician General explained that National Survey of Establishment (NSE), which covers 17 sectors of the economy, excluding agriculture, was the second part of the National Business Sample Census (NBSC) 2020/21 which started in October last year, after some delay brought about by the Covid-19 Pandemic.
According to him, by design, the NBSC 2020/21 has 2 major components, namely the listing or enumeration of business and commercial establishments across the country, while the second part is the sample survey, which is currently going on.
He explained: “In the listing part which was completed in December 2020 and resulted in the enumeration of over 1.4 million establishments nationwide, a set of criteria had to be met by the establishment to qualify for enumeration.
“To be enumerated under the exercise, the establishment must have a fixed location as well as operate from a fixed structure that can be locked up. The purpose for which is to ensure that we can easily locate the business establishment for future data collection activities.
“The data retrieved from the businesses during the listing exercise were the establishment’s contact details, nature of the business and ownership structure, number of employees, and GPS location”, Dr Kale added.
On the objectives of the ongoing exercise, he pointed out that the exercise, which was last conducted in 2012/3 just before the last Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Re-basing exercise, would be a significant input to the proposed GDP Re-basing which will move the current 2010 base year to a new base year, 2019, adding that when completed the NSE will provide updated sectoral information on 17 broad economic activities and give a better reflection of the commercial structure and composition of the Nigerian economy.
He further clarified: “It will provide useful information for policymakers on the activities driving of the Nigerian economy and those that require government intervention, as well as serve as a benchmark for subsequent commercial and industrial sector statistics.
In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic when many businesses and commercial activities have been impacted severely, a survey such as this, with the information to emanate is extremely invaluable to designing and planning for the post-COVID-19 long term growth and development of the private sector in Nigeria”, the Statistician General added.
To ensure the success of the NSE survey, Dr. Kale “solicited the kind cooperation and support of the media and other members of the public, particularly sampled establishments, to kindly provide the requested information in an accurate and timely. By doing this, we will ensure that the output of the exercise is credible and of the highest quality possible, as well as meet up with the set timeline for the survey.”
He assured that as is conventional in NBS and also provided for in its enabling Statistical Act 2007, any data collected from businesses during the NSE exercise would be treated with upmost confidentiality and be solely used for the stated purposes and nothing else, adding that establishments should rest assured that their information perfectly safe in our hands.
