Statistics Agency spends N$137 million on pre-census activities
The Namibia Statistics Agency, having received N$209. 7 million to date for the upcoming national housing and population Census, has spent about N$137 million on pre-enumeration activities.
To date, the Agency received N$179.4 million from the government via the National Planning Commission and N$30.3 million from other government institutions for the census over the 2022-2023 and 2023-2025 financial years, covering pre-enumeration activities.
The Agency used the funds to complete the Census Mapping, Pilot Census as well as Pilot Post-enumeration Survey, having recruited 517 unemployed young people to visit and verify 955 037 built-up structures countrywide during the Census Mapping project at a cost of about N$ 101 million. Around 266 young unemployed people were recruited to conduct the pilot census as well as the Pilot Post-enumeration survey.
For the financial year of 2022-2023, the main enumeration was initially estimated to cost the Agency about N$950 million, however, it was able to adopt measures that will further reduce this budget amount to about N$606 million.
As of now, the development budget ceiling to carry out the main census in 2022-2023 as communicated by the National Planning Commission currently stands at N$500 million.
For the post-Census phase in the financial year 2023-2025, the budget is slightly above N$12 million which is allocated to Census data cleaning, processing, main report and thematic reports production.
According to Statistician-General Alex Shimuafeni, the N$500 million will cover the main Census enumeration and the largest allocation is towards the required workforce and transportation.
Shimuafeni said the budget ceiling for post enumeration activities planned for 2023-2024 stands at N$2 million.
In August 2022 the Agency will conduct the second phase of the Census, namely the census enumeration and post enumeration survey. Namibia will for the first time conduct a spatially-enabled and digital census enumeration. The Agency will be recruiting around 11,500 unemployed persons for the Census.
