Business Register for Pakistan – Decreasing the Statistical Burden with Advanced Sampling Methods

In order to increase transparency on the establishments, enterprises and their interconnections it is useful to have a register of these businesses. Such a business register (BR) includes not only information on regional coordinates, the legal status, the ownership, but also on the size and kind of economic activity. This information is imperative for governmental and administrative purposes such as assessing taxes and social contributions, auditing corporations, supervising environment-friendly ways of production and fair competition, subsidizing efficiently, performing reliable and comprehensive statistics, steering structural reforms and the like. But for the optimal allocation of their resources and their investment, private entrepreneurs also need transparency about the institutional economic setup they are part of. In Pakistan as in many other countries transparency is limited since the informal sector is relevant. Nevertheless, those economic actors who are playing the tune in business and in commerce should be known well to the ministries, to the other relevant government agencies and to semi-government institutions like chambers and associations. They should be listed or otherwise be captured as comprehensive and up-to-date as possible. In order to apply advanced survey methodologies, survey frames with the following requirements are essential to provide the basis for data collection and integration. These frames need to be up to date and modified regularly to avoid including establishments which aren't running their business anymore. The frame has to ensure a comprehensive coverage of the universe under consideration; viz. that all business entities which are still running a business are included. If the frame is combined out of several existing data sets it has to ensure that the entries are mutually exclusive and non-duplicative in the listings