Deputy General Director of the General Statistics Office Nguyễn Trung Tiến. — VNA/VNS Photo

What's new in the enterprise survey 2022?

The Enterprise Census in 2022 has new features including improvements in the content and approach to collecting information.

In parallel with the collection of annual information to serve the assessment of enterprises' production and business situation for comparison over time, the enterprise survey in 2022 collects some additional information for compiling indicators related to national accounts, digital economy, e-commerce and digital production. This information helps to supplement the missing information for compiling national statistical indicators.

Specifically, the business survey in 2022 adds questions reflecting the sales situation through e-commerce via websites, mobile applications, e-commerce platforms, and social networks.

It also collects additional information about the production of digital products, fixed assets of the enterprise and enterprises’ solutions for social and environmental problems for the benefit of the community.

The 2022 Enterprise Census is a collection of information about enterprises' manufactured products similar to the 2021 Economic Census instead of the economic sector-based approach as done in 2020 and earlier. 

The use of administrative data in statistics is an inevitable trend and is of particular interest to the statistics industry. Can you please tell us about the effectiveness of using administrative data in this census?

The Enterprise Census in 2022 makes full use of administrative data, especially the database of the Ministry of Finance’s General Department of Taxation, to minimise the information to be collected in the survey.

It is possible to remove some indicators on production and business results and capital assets obtained from administrative data. It collects information that is not included in the financial statement data.

In addition, the General Statistics Office used the tax registration data provided by the General Department of Taxation and combined it with the data of the 2021 Economic Census to make a sampling frame to conduct sampling for the enterprise survey in 2022.

Information from monthly and quarterly tax returns is updated into the sampling frame to select samples to ensure greater accuracy in the selection of the surveyed sample compared to previous years.

Along with that, we make full use of data from the financial statements of enterprises provided by the General Department of Taxation to reduce the load of information that needs to be collected in the survey form. All information contained in the financial statements will not be collected in the enterprise survey in 2022.

How is information technology applied to shorten the survey time?

After the success of information technology application in the 2019 Population and Housing Census and the 2021 Economic Census, the 2022 enterprise census continues to thoroughly apply information technology to all stages from preparation, information collection, processing and publication of survey results.

During the information collection, enterprises will directly log into the system through the website thongkedoanhnghiep.gso.gov.vn to declare information. Investigators will assist businesses with login information, operations and instructions on how to fill in the information.

However, with the method of collecting information online, businesses must be highly responsible for the information that they provide. Most enterprises strictly abide by the Law on Statistics and provide information upon request. However, there are still many businesses that deliberately evade or delay in providing information or provide perfunctory, incomplete, inaccurate and untimely information.

I believe that the application of information technology helps to improve the quality of data, capture information on the actual survey progress and control the quality of the survey timely, enhance transparency in processing statistical information, from which time for the processing can be shortened, thus the survey results could be public sooner. — VNS