Large-scale construction survey by BBS on way
The government is conducting the country's first large scale survey on construction to gauge the sector's real contribution to the economy and employment generation.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has already conducted five separate surveys during the course of the fiscal year to collect information. The state-run statistical agency yesterday organised a workshop to finalise the draft tabulation plan and layout of the survey.
The Construction Survey 2014, which is now at its final stage, will give a detailed picture of the sector, a notable contributor to the gross domestic product, said Golam Mostafa Kamal, director general of BBS.
The share of the construction sector to GDP is about 7.5 percent, but Md Zobdul Hoque, a consultant working for the survey and former deputy director general of BBS, said the figure was based on either case studies or pilot surveys conducted in the 1980s.
The sector accounts for about 75 percent of total investment and 4.8 percent of total employment, said Ziauddin Ahmed, programme director of the BBS's statistics and informatics division, while presenting an overview on the survey.
He said about 75 to 85 percent of the construction raw materials or commodities are being produced in the country by local manufacturing industries.
The final report on the survey, whose main objective is to estimate the total value added by the sector during a year, is expected to be ready within the next three months, according to Hoque.
The survey will also: estimate the total value of annual construction by types of construction activity; determine the various rates and ratios of construction; estimate the proportion of expenditure of various construction materials for determining the weights; develop a sound database for the sector; and estimate the gross value-added by the sector as well as the proportion of the value-added components.
One of the five surveys focused on the baseline survey on production and availability of construction materials and covered a sample size of 597 manufacturing units.
The survey on katcha houses had a sample size of 600 primary sampling units and 9,000 households, while the survey on residential and non-residential buildings studied 250 construction firms in seven divisions.
The public sector construction survey covered 400 union parishads, 67 municipalities, 10 city corporations and 64 district parishads.
The survey on specialised construction and related activities covered seven divisional cities and collected market price of more than 118 construction materials. In case of every material, information was collected from seven shops in each of the divisions.
Suraiya Begum, secretary of the implementation, monitoring and evaluation division, also spoke.
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