The data Pakistan needed

EDITORIAL: Following the release of the 2023 population census last year and the agriculture census earlier this year, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has now unveiled the country’s first-ever economic census.

This landmark publication closes a critical gap in Pakistan’s data landscape, offering not only a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the nation’s economy but also valuable insights into its social fabric.

Accurate and reliable data forms the bedrock of sound policy, enabling governments to design interventions that respond effectively to the needs of their people.

Together, these three censuses can now help lay the foundation for informed policymaking, evidence-based governance and a deeper understanding of the country’s demographic, economic and societal realities.

That Pakistan went 78 years since independence without an economic census speaks volumes about the state’s neglect and shortsightedness. This omission becomes even more glaring when set against our regional counterparts, who recognised long ago the value of systematically documenting their economies.

India has conducted seven such censuses and Bangladesh three, underscoring how far ahead they have been in building a foundation for informed policymaking. Pakistan, by contrast, chose to remain blind to critical economic realities, until now.

For instance, one of the census’ most striking findings challenges the long-held myth that industry forms the backbone of Pakistan’s economy as its largest employer and primary contributor to GDP.

In reality, the services sector occupies this central role, employing 45 percent of the 25.4 million-strong workforce and accounting for 58 percent of all business establishments.

Manufacturing, by contrast, makes up 25 percent of establishments and employs 22 percent of workers — barely half the share in services — while the social sector accounts for 14 percent of establishments and 30 percent of employment. This reality highlights the need to understand the structural constraints facing industry and adopt policies to restore its central role in driving economic growth.

Equally noteworthy is the revelation that around 95 percent of businesses in Pakistan employ fewer than 10 workers, underscoring the pivotal role of SMEs in shaping the economy. Many of these remain outside the formal sector, limiting their access to finance and growth opportunities.

The census also shows that 28.5 percent of households are engaged in home-based economic activity, another testament to the informal sector’s critical contribution in fostering entrepreneurship and providing livelihoods in rural communities. These insights should drive the government to craft policies that both support SME growth — through better access to credit, markets and technology — and tackle the structural factors that keep businesses informal, creating incentives and pathways for them to scale up and enter the formal economy.

The census also brings to light pronounced provincial variations in both workforce distribution and the spread of economic establishments. Punjab, for instance, accounts for the largest share of the workforce with 13.6 million workers, in sharp contrast to Balochistan’s mere 1.4 million. This contrast reflects not only the differing demographic make-up of the provinces — with Punjab the most populous and Balochistan the least — but also deeper economic disparities and inequities in resource distribution.

Beyond economic patterns, the census has also uncovered broader societal and socio-economic realities — for instance, revealing the existence of 36,000 religious seminaries nationwide, a figure that had long been speculated upon since their rapid proliferation during the Zia era but never before so precisely quantified. This quantification raises important questions about the role such institutions play in shaping education, labour markets and the country’s broader socio-political trajectory.

Taken together, the population, agriculture and economic censuses provide interlinked datasets that if properly correlated and analysed can offer an integrated picture of Pakistan’s demographics, productive capacities and economic structures. It is now incumbent upon the government to use their findings as a foundation for informed, long-term and holistic policymaking.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025