September 14: The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has published the preliminary report of the National Economic Census 2018. The report of the first economic census of Nepal was unveiled by Dr Ram Kumar Phuyal, a member of National Planning Commission (NPC), on September 13 amidst a function held on the premises of CBS office.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Phuyal said, “This census is a way forward for Nepal’s development as the information of all necessary indicators in statistics is derived from it. This will support in the economic forecasting.”

The programme was attended by Shinya Machida, minister-counselor as well as deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Japan in Nepal; chief representative of JICA Nepal Office, Jun Sakuma; Director General of CBS Suman Raj Aryal and JICA experts engaged in the census operation.

According to the preliminary report, there are altogether 922,445 official business establishments across Nepal. The biggest district in terms of number of such establishments is Kathmandu with 123,994 business entities followed by Jhapa (38,741), Rupandehi (38,415), Morang (35,237) and Sunsari (31,486).

Province wise, Province 3 tops the list with 282,056 establishments followed by Province 1 (168,434), Province 5 (147,892), Province 2 (117,588), Province 4 (100,688) and Province 7 (62,970). According to the report, Province 6 is at the bottom of this list with 42,817 business establishments.

CBS with the technical assistance of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is implementing the “Project on Capacity Development for the Implementation of Economic Census 2018 in Nepal”. Issuing a press statement, JICA said that the project aims to conduct the first-ever economic census in Nepal. CBS carried out the field operation of the National Economic Census 2018 from April 14 to June 14, 2018 mobilising 4,000 supervisor and enumerators.