National business register in works

New Delhi, January 17

The government plans to create a business enterprise register that will have details of all kinds of businesses being run in the country as it gears up to conduct a nationwide economic census in 2019-20.

“We propose to build a business enterprise register which can be regularly updated and utilised by state and Central governments,” Pravin Srivastava, Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), said at a workshop with CSC e-Governance Services India.

MoSPI has roped in CSC e-governance, also known as CSC SPV, for conducting the seventh economic census.

CSC e-governance manages around three lakh common service centres which will be roped in for the survey programme. Each CSC will create five enumerators who will be trained for the economic survey.

“The enumerators can be used for all kinds of surveys, even Census of India. This is the first time paperless survey will be conducted using technology. It will be completed within six months while earlier it used to take two years,” Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV, said.

Started in 1977, to date, only six economic censuses have been done due to the massive work involved.

Tyagi said there are 20 crore households across the country and an enumerator is expected to be paid Rs 15-20 per household, so even at a conservative estimate expenditure on the economic census will be upward of Rs 300 crore.

“I am confident that if CSCs are involved in Census of India, it can be done every two years instead of 10 years,” Tyagi said. — PTI