Informal Non-Agricultural Enterprises Survey, July 1999 - June 2000

NSS 55th Round

The 55th round of NSS conducted during July 1999 to June 2000 was an integrated survey on household consumer expenditure, employment-unemployment and informal sector non-agricultural enterprises.The eligibility criteria for enterprises to be covered in the survey was at least 30 days of operation (15 days of operation for seasonal enterprises) in the reference year. Although, there is no unique definition of informal sector, for our purpose all unincorporated enterprises which operate on either proprietary or partnership basis were considered to constitute the informal sector. This definition differed from the usual NSS concept of unorganized sector. In the unorganized sector, in addition to the proprietary or partnership enterprises, cooperative societies, trusts, private and public limited companies were also covered. Thus informal sector can be considered as a subset of the unorganized sector. It may be mentioned that all manufacturing units of proprietary or partnership nature which were covered under ASI were also not treated as informal enterprises.

The NIC-1998 codes (2-digited) for the activities covered were as follows: manufacturing : 15 to 37, construction: 45, trade and repair services: 50 to 52, hotels and restaurants: 55, transport, storage and communications: 60 to 64, other services: 65 to 67, 70 to 74, 80, 85, 90 to 93. It may be noted that, unlike in NIC 1987, repairing services have been considered with trade sector in NIC 1998, and not with the manufacturing sector.

Reference Period: Last month was used as the reference period to collect most of the data. Various receipts and expenses as well as employment, emoluments, rent, interest, net surplus and value added for the enterprises were collected for last month only. Last month will refer to the last working month for perennial and casual enterprises. For seasonal enterprises, however, last month refered to an average month in the last working season. Month refer to a period of 30 days. For some of the items like value of fixed assets, amount of loan outstanding etc., the reference period was 'as on the date survey'. For some other items like net additions to fixed assets, number of months operated, number of other economic activities taken up etc., the period of reference was the 'last 365 days preceding the date of survey'.

Structure of the schedule: Schedule 2.0 consisted of 14 blocks (blocks 0 to 13). Blocks 0 and 1 were meant to record identification of the enterprise; Blocks 11, 12 and 13 were for reporting particulars of field operation, remarks by the investigator and comments by the supervisory officers. In the remaining 9 blocks, data were to be collected from the enterprises.

Some operational characteristics of the enterprises were collected in block 2. Blocks 3, 3.1 and 4, 4.1 were the main blocks of the schedule where operating expenses and various receipts of the enterprises will be recorded. In Blocks 3 and 4 recorded the principal expenses and receipts whereas in blocks 3.1 and 4.1 recorded the other expenses and receipts. Schedule 2.0 has been designed in such a way that the different types of receipts and expenses for different types of enterprises could be accommodated within the framework of blocks 3 and 4. To meet this objective, each of these two blocks was subdivided into 7 sub-blocks. While these sub-blocks were meant for specific types of enterprise, blocks 3.1 and 4.1 are common for all enterprises. It may be noted that for an enterprise which runs a mixed activity, more than one of the sub-blocks of blocks 3 & 4 had entries.

Block 5 was kept for calculation of gross value added. The employment particulars of the enterprises were recorded in block 6. Blocks 7, 8 and 9 were meant to collect information on emoluments, fixed assets and loan position of the enterprises respectively. The factor incomes of the enterprise was recorded in block 10. It may be noted that from this block also, value added can be generated. So, blocks 5 and 10 together provide an in-built check in the schedule for assessing the reasonability of the data.