National Business Register
The Government of India has launched a mammoth enumeration exercise in March 2016 to collect data on all the business enterprise in the country for the National Business Register. Objective of this initiative is to strengthen the assessment of economic activity in the country.
Current Position
There are numerous activities to gather data on economy in India. For example, the Economic Census counted all the entrepreneurial units in the country since 1977 till 2013 in six such censuses. These provided information on operational and other features such as numbers, persons employed, sources of finance, type of ownership etc. The data was used to prepare micro / decentralized plan for various sectors of the economy. The problem
Similarly, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOPSI) conducts an Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), which serves as the principal source of industrial statistics. However, this survey covers relatively bigger units relating to manufacturing and repair sub-sectors. However, ASI did not provide data on other industrial sectors.
One of the stated objectives of the sixth Indian Economic Census was to provide updated Directory of Establishments employing 10 or more workers up to the village/ward level for local level planning purposes and use the same as an input for the development of National Business Register, which would be useful for estimation of District Domestic Product. However, no substantial progress was made so far towards this direction.
What will it cover?
The National Business Register would make a directory of establishments at the “district level” covering seven Acts and authorities viz. Factories Act, Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, Companies Act, Societies Registration Act, Cooperative Societies Act, Khadi & Village Industries Board and Directorate of Industries. The data will be collected from the licensing authorities under these acts.
Aims and Objectives
Just as the National Population Register seeks to record details of every citizen, the Business Register would aim to record district-wise details of established engaged in production of goods and services. The data would comprise 33 columns that will offer details such as the name of an enterprise, its location, activities, type of ownership, number of workers, PAN/TAN, etc. The government wants to create an electronic database of all such information and give a boost to Digital India and promotion of Khadi and small scale businesses. The data would also enrich the industry database of the governent and would help in micro-level planning.
