The government statistician, Samuel Kobina Annim has disclosed that, the Integrated Establishment Survey 1 (IBES) Phase I will commence on January 15, 2024.
He addressed this during a media engagement and public announcement at the Africa University College and Communication in Adabraka on Thursday, January 11.
According to him, the IBES Phase 1 is an economic business census that will enumerate all businesses in Ghana irrespective of their geographical area, size, profit or non-profit oriented or operate in residential buildings, market buildings industrial buildings or online while Phase II, will involve a sample survey of selected businesses to obtain detailed data on their activities.
“Data collection will be done technology intensively to capture information of businesses running online, the country has surpassed the analogy that business grow via physical means, thus, this year’s IBES has created a dashboard to gather data of all businesses working online”, he added.
He emphasized that the IBES phase 1, is expected to provide data on the activities of businesses to inform policy, planning and monitoring of business growth and national development programmes and employment status of workers employed by businesses to help bridge the gap between the labour needs of firms and available skills resident in Ghana.
“There will be independent creditors from various universities and 80 monitors from the service to ensure that the data collection process will run smoothly”, he said.
He further stated that close to 1600 people are undergoing training and expected to finish by January 13.
“The exercise will visit all 16 administrative regions in the country, 261 administrative districts and 272 statistical districts where we are deploying 11,588 enumerators in all structures to enquire if businesses are operating”, he informed.
The National Project Coordinator for IBES, Anthony Krakah, announced that the budget for the Phase I project expected to end by June is about GHC128 million.
He urged stakeholders and businesses to cooperate with enumerators when they come around for their information.