Uganda National Bureau of Statistics-UBOS has plans to carry
out the national population and housing census next year, two years earlier
than expected. The UBOS Executive Director, Chris Mukiza revealed this
while appearing before the Finance Committee of parliament to review their performance
for the 2019/2020 financial year on Tuesday.
Although the statistics body always carries out
the census after every 10 years, it faced a delay after the 2002 census and
ended up conducting the census meant for 2012 in 2014. Now UBOS has decided to
go back to the initial 10-year schedule, which has put the next census in 2022.
Mukiza says that they have decided to do this early to help
in the implementation of the ongoing National Development Plan 3, which seeks
to increase household income and improve the quality of life. Mukiza says
that they require Shillings 138.6billion to carry out the 2022 census of
livestock and 2022 national population and housing census.
He says although the ten years have not yet reached, they
want to collect data due to the drastic changes that have happened to date. Mukiza
says that they have planned to carry out the census between the last week of
August and the first week of September.
//Cue in: “The census is…
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According to UBOS, the
COVID-19 pandemic presented with lots of challenges, which stopped them from
conducting nine surveys.
These include the Uganda National Household survey 2019/2020,
the Annual Agricultural Survey, the Census of Business Establishment, informal
cross Border Trade survey, National livestock census, the National
service delivery Survey, Baseline Education Census of Education and
Tourism immigration data capture.
Uganda's population is projected at 47 million people.