By: Binta Jaiteh
The Government of The Gambia, through the Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS), is preparing to conduct another Economic Census and Business Establishment Survey by listing all entities with a fixed structure operating in the country.
The objectives of the economic census is to collect information about businesses and industries in The Gambia for understanding the economic landscape and providinggovernment and other data users with information needed for evidence-based decision-making.
This disclosure was made by the Deputy Statistician General, Alieu Saho, in his keynote address during a training of enumerators organized by GBoS at the Paradise Hotel on Thursday.
He stated that the census is expected to be conducted every fiveyears but due to limited resources, it is not as frequent as it should be.
“The first GDP base year for The Gambia was 1974 and this was used until 2004,” said the deputy statistician general.
According to him, the rebasing requires data obtained from diverse economic activities data, which will be derived from the integrated household survey, agricultural census, labour force survey and data on fishing and livestock.
Mr. Saho outlined that the objective of the census is to collect and provide statistics on formal economic activities for the rebasing of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates from 2013 to 2023 base year.
“It also aims to update the taxpayers’ database and industrial coding of economic activities following the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), which will facilitate the use of tax data classified by industry for the compilation of quarterly GDP,” he disclosed.
Mr. Saho indicated that the census, therefore, is a great opportunity for the country to change its data landscape as it will help policy and decision-making, development of projects and programmes and as well as tracking progress towards the achievement of the set targets for the NDP, AU Agenda 2063 and SDGs.
He said stated that this exercise cannot be more timely than now“as we have started producing quarterly GDP and preparing to migrate to the new SNA (SNA
2025)”.
He concluded by thanking all members of the Technical Working Group of the Economic Census and Business Enterprise Survey for the good work in producing the right instruments and coordinating the entire process.
“Our sincere gratitude is extended to the World Bank and the Government of the Gambia for providing the funds and technical assistance,” acknowledged Saho.
