CBS says no to Karnali’s demand to pre-pone census

Kathmandu, Dec. 15:

While the newly created sub-national structures are complaining about the shortage of timely and relevant data for the development planning, the Central Bureau of Statistic (CBS) has said that local governments should use the data available and conduct additional surveys themselves if they needed additional information.

Representatives from various local governments, since they hold the office, have been making remarks about the lack of availability of relevant statistics for the effective planning in their local units.

Karnali province has even been planning to ask the central government to pre-pone the census which is conducted every 10 years and the 12^th census is slated for 2021.

“The province is lagging behind in every aspect in comparison to other provinces in the country. In many districts we have to start the development from the scratch so we need an updated demographical data. The provincial government may ask the central government to pre-pone the 2021 census,” said Dr. Punya Prasad Regmi, Vice-Chairman of the Provincial Planning Commission of Karnali.

According to him, an updated data will help in targeting the planning and development works which can provide immediate benefits to the people in the respective area.

Earlier, ministers for economic affairs and planning of provinces had also pointed towards the gap of the updated demographical data.

Contrary to this, the CBS said that the census could not be executed before its stipulated time.

“Every census of national survey has standard time interval which should be respected,” said Suman Raj Aryal, Director General of the CBS.

The CBS is the central agency for the collection, consolidation, processing, analysis and dissemination of statistics, and conducts multiple censuses and surveys such as agriculture and forest, price statistics, poverty and labour, trade, economic census and environment.

Aryal said that the weak civil registration or vital statistics has created a gap in terms of updated information about the demographic size and situation in many local units. Civil statistics refer to the data about birth, death, marriage, migration, separation or divorce.

A senior official at the National Planning Commission (NPC) said that the provincial and local governments are using the data gap as an excuse to hide their incapability.

“Census is not the barrier in development works since one can refer to the previous census as well as other surveys. But some of the local representatives do not know how to use the statistics available,” he said.

In order to support the newly created sub-national governments in planning, the CBS has created separate province-based statistics after the implementation of the federalism while the district-based data was already available.

Meanwhile, Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has published a special profile of provinces that includes their demographic, social, economic and financial situation.

The reports of the CBS and NRB extensively present the data on the provinces’ Gross Domestic Product, per capita income, production size of agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors, employment, productivity, infrastructure, education, health services, poverty, food security, and other relevant information.

Demographic status of provinces as per 2011 census

Province	Population	Households	Pop. Density	Area%	Population%
Province 1	4,534,943	991,750	175	17.6	17.1
Province 2	5,404,145	932,087	559	6.6	20.4
Province 3	5,529,452	1,269,144	272	13.8	20.9
Gandaki	2,735,661	639,527	121	15.3	10.3
Province 5	4,114,184	811,710	238	11.8	15.5
Karnali	1,623,602	309,376	51	21.7	6.1
SudurPaschim	2,552,517	469,703	131	13.3	9.6

Source: Population Monograph, CBS

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 16 December 2018.