New stats register soon to help gauge business outlook

New Delhi: The government will soon launch a Statistical Business Register (SBR) that will host data on the number of businesses operating in districts, aggregating up to state level.

The ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) will use the SBR to prepare business outlook/sentiment surveys, people aware of the details told ET.

A dedicated working group has been formed in the ministry for developing the SBR.


The comprehensive SBR dataset would capture business demography across size, industry, number of employees and geographical area.

It is expected to serve as a framework for enterprise surveys, market analysis (identifying demand areas and investment potential), policy analysis, gross domestic product (GDP) estimation, industrial performance, employment and growth trends.

The SBR will source data from the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), corporate affairs ministry's database, goods and services tax (GST) data and annual survey of industries (ASI), ET reported earlier.

Additionally, the Economic Census will be used to provide organised and unorganised sector data.

The SBR is expected to be updated on a quarterly or monthly basis, depending on the feasibility, an official aware of details said.

The initiative aligns with the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) recommendation of creating an SBR, which has been adopted by more than 60% of developing countries. The current business statistics suffers from non-uniformity, fragmentation, duplication of units and absence of unified data repository.