India came up with an idea of maintaining National Statistical Business Register which will contain data of all business enterprises in the country collected and combined on the basis of the ongoing seventh economic census.

Register will contain district-wise list of all business enterprises who are engages in production or distribution of goods or services. Goods and Service Tax Network, databases of Employees’ State Insurance Corporation, and Employees’ Provident Fund Organization will be used to update the information in the register.

“The census will provide a framework for dynamic register which can be updated using the data from other departments including GSTN,” said an official in the know of the development.

The collected data will help to improve the quality of national accounts and is also expected to provide input for the proposed annual survey of service

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has planned of maintaining such a register that is going to strengthen the assessment of economic activity by digitising enterprises’ data.

The name of an enterprise, its location, activities, type of ownership, number of workers and PAN/TAN details will be maintained in the register.

Finance ministry will be sharing their GST data which includes quarterly collections and information about tax payer units which is going to empower the national accounts.

“As per India’s first chief statistician Pronab Sen, the proposed service will draw from two sources-data from GSTN and a business register. All business with an annual turnover of over Rs 40 lakh have to register under GSTN. For North East and Jammu & Kashmir, the threshold is lower at Rs 20 lakh. “This is because unlike the Annual Survey of Industries, services have a dynamic frame,” Sen said. “These two datasets will then feed into the GDP estimates.” He said on name, address and type of business from GSTN can be used in the planned survey.

Recently numerous states began preparing their own business register. As Rajasthan successfully developed business register which includes unique Business Registration Number (BRN), by combining business establishments in the state.

“The government’s idea to conduct the economic census every three years is not wise because it is costly and requires deployment of huge number of people,” says Pronab Sen.

“With school teachers not permitted to conduct survey, all state government functionaries are being involved and that is a challenge,” he said.