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Bianca Mlilo, Business Reporter
ZIMSTAT, the country’s statistics agency yesterday launched the revised Central Business Register (CBR), a confidential database of all business establishments operating in Zimbabwe.
Entities under the CBR are grouped into sectors that include Government, non-governmental, private proprietorship, sole proprietors and households.
Zimstat director-general Mr Mutasa Dzinotizei told delegates who attended the launch in Bulawayo that findings of the CBR inquiry were part of the statistics agency’s drive to broaden the country’s understanding of economic statistics and their significance in the production of official statistics.
“The construction and maintenance of a CBR is a prerequisite for a country to improve accuracy in the compilation of gross domestic product (GDP) figures,” said Mr Dzinotizei.
“In the context of Zimbabwe, the significance of the CBR is underscored and encapsulated in the Census and Statistics Act, which demands the agency to develop and maintain a CBR in relation to establishments containing particulars as may be prescribed, among other functions.”
He said harmonisation (of data collection in surveys) depends on the use of common frameworks, one of which is the CBR.
The significance of the CBR in providing the sampling frame for economic surveys cannot be over-emphasised, he said.
Mr Dzinotizei commended the agency’s technical and financial partners, the United States of America and the United Nations through their different organisations in the creation of the CBR, Zimstat’s new website and the survey of services.
Mr Dzinotizei said Zimstat had, with financial assistance from development partners, upgraded its website to develop mechanisms for the dissemination of data.
“The Zimstat website has been upgraded with the aim to upload the critical indicators such as monthly inflation, GDP, trade statistics, population statistics and industrial statistics in an interactive way,” he said.
“Linked to the new website is the Zimbabwe Statistics Database (Zimdat), a national indicator database, which was adapted from DevInfo software.
The software allows for the organisation, storage and display of data in maps, graphs and tables, facilitating the sharing of data by various users.”
Central business registers in other countries can be accessed for a fee and are a way of accessing information and vary from country to country.
They also vary depending on the size and legal form of the company (sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability etc). Many of the official company registries are on the Web and some offer access to their database of companies.
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