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Sikhulekelani Moyo, Business Reporter

ZIMBABWE Statistics Agency (ZimStat) has embarked on a wider business survey covering several industrial sectors of the economy in a bid to produce comprehensive statistics to assist effective evaluation, assessment and future forecast.

In a statement, the statistics agency said the surveys are being conducted under the provisions of the Census and Statistics Act, adding that the information provided by respondents will be strictly confidential and used solely for statistics purposes.

“The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency is undertaking the following business survey across all industrial sectors of the economy; 2021 census on industrial production, 2021 survey of service, 2022 first quarter business tendency survey and 2022 quarterly employment inquiry,” reads the statement.

The agency said the surveys are being undertaken with the objective to produce statistics on industrial capacity utilisation, value addition, employment levels, business confidence indicators and investment levels.

“Statistics produced from the above-mentioned surveys are important in that they, amongst other uses enable the business community to evaluate their performance within and outside their industrial sectors so as to develop informed strategies, forecast future production based on past trends and assess profitability, productivity and efficiency of their operations,” said ZimStat.

“However, the statistics are required for compilation of Gross Domestic Product in addition to key performance indicators such as value-added growth rate, employment growth and share of industrial activity to total value added.”

The statistics agency said Covid-19 lockdown measures heavily impacted on production of statistics due to a low response rate from companies.

 As such, ZimStat said it has now scaled up data collection for business surveys. -@SikhulekelaniM1