Statistical Business Register

A statistical business register is the master, general-purpose list of enterprises an NSO maintains, and the recommended basis for deriving sampling frames for list-based enterprise surveys — including energy industry surveys.

Use of the business register

In principle, a survey’s sampling frame should contain all units in the survey target population, without duplication or omission. The business register maintained by countries for statistical purposes provides such a population. In general, a statistical business register is a comprehensive list of all enterprises and other units, together with their characteristics, that are active in a national economy. It functions both as a tool for conducting statistical surveys and as a source of statistics in its own right. Establishment and maintenance of a statistical business register is, in most cases, based on legal provisions, since its scope and coverage are determined by country-specific factors [IRES, Ch. VII, para. 7.47, PDF p. 108, 2018].

Recommendation (7.47): it is recommended, as the best option, that the frame for every list-based enterprise survey for energy industries be derived from a single general-purpose statistical business register maintained by the statistical office, rather than from stand-alone registers built separately for each individual survey [IRES, Ch. VII, para. 7.47, PDF p. 108, 2018] — recommendations tracker row VII/7.47.

Fallback when no current register exists

Recommendation (7.48): for countries not maintaining an up-to-date business register, it is recommended that the list of enterprises drawn from the latest economic census, amended as necessary using relevant information from other sources, be used as the sampling frame instead [IRES, Ch. VII, para. 7.48, PDF p. 108, 2018] — recommendations tracker row VII/7.48. This fallback echoes the census-as-substitute reasoning already noted for countries without an up-to-date register at para 7.38.

Related

• Statistical Data Sources — enterprise surveys and the survey-design workflow the register feeds
• Statistical Unit Characteristics — the identification-code characteristic (para 6.26) notes that codes shared with administrative authorities facilitate linking the statistical business register to other registers
• Administrative Data Sources — administrative registers as a related, but distinct, category of source