The agency responsible for producing SA’s official statistics has still not received the bulk of the funding necessary for it to conduct the all-important income and expenditure survey which among other things measures the extent of poverty in the country.
No such survey has been conducted since 2013/2014 meaning that there is no up to date picture of poverty in the country which worsened considerably during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is usually carried out every five years.
“We don’t know the percentage of people that are poor in our country,” statistician-general Risenga Maluleke said in an interview. The survey also provides information on what people spend their money on which is important for identifying an up to date basket of goods and services which is used to determine the consumer price index (CPI).
Stats SA produces a host of statistics for example on GDP, employment, CPI, trade and on the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors which are used by the government for planning purposes as well as by the Reserve Bank and economists, among other things.
The agency has been hard hit by budget cuts (R766m over the next three years) due to the government’s fiscal crisis which has placed considerable strain on its operations. It has already had to curtail some of its surveys but the census which will take place in February — the first since 2011 — has been protected. An amount of R2.1bn was allocated for this in the 2021/2022 budget. Stats SA does release population estimates every year but these do not produce all the information that a census does.
With regard to the income and expenditure survey, Maluleke said the Treasury has made money available for Stats SA to conduct a battery of tests in preparation for when it is properly funded. He is hopeful it can be conducted next year after the census in February.
The agency has been asking for money for the survey since 2016/2017 but this has not been forthcoming.
“There are indications they to want to fund the survey but one thing we have learnt at Stats SA is that you are only guaranteed funding when you have money in the kitty. We cannot live on promises.”
Maluleke said that apart from the income and expenditure survey the agency’s statistical output has largely been protected from the budget cuts. It used to have 260-270 products annually including its integrative reports but this has been scaled down to 250-260 products.
Conducting Census 2022 will involve the employment of about 160,000 enumerators interviewing about 15-million heads of households out of an estimated population of 60.1-million.
The census will generate data not only on the size of the population but also on its racial and gender breakdown, income, employment, the type of structures people live in, the proximity of facilities such as water and so on. Fertility statistics on the number of children women will have in their lifetime will also be collected to assist with future population estimates.
Maluleke said there would be racial subcategories which will allow people to say that they are for example white but want to be classified as African or as other.
Preparations for the census, which was due to take place in October this year but had to be postponed first due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and then to the local government elections, have been ongoing with pilots already completed. A battery of tests have also been completed.
Maluleke said three methods will be used to collect data, smart devices used during personal interviews, telephone interviews by call centre staff (also used for the quarterly labour force survey) and self-enumeration using the internet. Previously the censuses were only conducted on paper through personal interviews which entailed laborious data-capturing processes.
A large investment had to be made in procuring the necessary devices. Results will be made available 12 months after the census is conducted.
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