To enhance decision-making for businesses to thrive, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced that it will conduct a comprehensive census of informal and formal businesses across the country.

The exercise according to the Service will be conducted in two phases with the initial one to be held in mid-October 2023 and the second phase in 2024.

The Service added that the census which will also include not-for-profit businesses will be an improvement of economic censuses held since 1962.

Speaking at the Ghana 2023 Integrated Business Establishment Survey (IBES I) Stakeholders Consultative Meeting, the Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim said the survey would benefit the country immensely.

“One of the goals that we will achieve with the census is what we are calling helping businesses escape the informality trap. So as a service, we’ve identified that from different perspectives we’ve looked at businesses as informal or persons working in businesses as informal. So different development partners, different policy instruments, different policy trajectories that seek to solve the informality problem that we have.”

“The second unique advantage of the 2023 Ghana integrated business establishment survey which we will realise in the second phase is how we can ensure that the challenges that we have to endure during the pandemic in attempting to provide data to overcome those challenges,” he stated.

Reiterating the importance of the data collection exercise to inform policymaking, Prof Annim urged the cooperation of all business owners.