The Ministry of Planning and Investment will submit a scheme on informal economic statistics to the Prime Minister for approval this year.

This was announced by Nguyen Bich Lam, Director General of the General Statistics Office (GSO) on January 15 at a conference to review the activities of the ministry last year.

Lam said the operation of the informal business sector contributed to the economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) but it was not yet accounted for in calculating GDP.

The informal sector includes businesses of households and “underground” establishments that were formed to avoid tax obligations and social responsibility, he said.

After the informal statistics scheme is submitted to the Prime Minister for approval in the first quarter of this year, GSO will cooperate with ministries and localities to seek feasible solutions to implement the scheme and take the sector into account while calculating GDP in the coming years.

In addition to this, GSO will adjust the GDP scale based on the results of the 2016 Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Census and the Economic Census 2017. It will also strengthen the coordination and sharing of statistical information with ministries and agencies to build a national statistical database.

GSO will also focus on preparing the population and housing census in 2019 to build a national database on population statistics, Lam said. — VNS