China has more or less finished collecting and processing data for its first national economic census, a senior Chinese statistician said.

Addressing an international workshop on the economic census in Beijing yesterday, Commissioner Li Deshui of the National Bureau of Statistics said the government will publish the results between September and December.

"We have entered the harvest season," Li said.

The first national economic census is aimed at painting an accurate picture of China's manufacturing, building and service industries, and completing a database covering all economic sectors.

The government will compare the results of the census with previously released annual statistics to find differences between them, said Li.

Then it will revise historical figures to make them closer to reality, he added.

The government will also try to use the data to establish a survey system for its service industry and construct a business register system, he said.

The government has arranged for about 10 million census takers and more than 3 billion yuan (US$370 million) for the census.

It is a big issue in China's economic and social life, Li said.

The census will play an important role in outlining future strategy and policies for economic and social development, adjusting and optimizing the economic structure, as well as beefing up and improving China's macro-controls, he said.

The results can be immediately applied to the government's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), he said.

Foreign countries and international organizations are paying close attention to the census, Li said.

This explains why leading statisticians and experts from more than 30 countries and regions and international organizations have come to participate in the workshop, he said. Li expressed the hope that international statisticians and experts could help improve China's work in statistics.

Paul Cheung, director of the United Nations Statistics Division, said the workshop is envisaged as a forum to discuss the methodology and related technical issues of the economic census and to exchange relevant experiences in alternative approaches.

The overarching goal was to evaluate the potential of an economic census in the context of efforts to compile high quality and policy-relevant economic statistics, he said.

(China Daily July 27, 2005)