The Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau, Geraldo Martins, announced this Friday that a general population census is being prepared, which has not been carried out for 14 years.
The Director General spoke during a visit to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the organization that is leading this process and which received this Friday the computer equipment purchased in Portugal for the 4th General Census of Population and Housing.
This is the first institution the Prime Minister has visited since taking office in August, the importance of which he highlighted by emphasizing that “informed decisions in matters of governance and the development process largely depend on the availability of reliable and high-quality statistics.”
Geraldo Martins stated that INE is “preparing to carry out mapping for the next general census, due to begin in 2024.”
“We have not conducted a general population census for 14 years, the last one was in 2009, and in general censuses are carried out once every ten years,” he pointed out.
The Prime Minister was “very impressed with the work that INE is developing”, emphasizing that “despite all the difficulties of the country, it has managed to carry out interesting work.”
Proof of this was an exchange with technical specialists regarding inflation recorded in August, where a company executive asked if it was 5.6% and learned that it was still 7.2%.
“This means that INE can provide data quickly and for us as a government this is important because we cannot make leaps in the dark, we need to know the data, we need to know what the situation is in the country so that, starting from therefore, we predict what the government can do,” he added.
The mapping “will take about ten months and then the census phase will begin”, a process that the Prime Minister predicts will last until 2025.
To carry out this work, INE has the support of several partners, namely the World Bank and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which funded the acquisition of IT equipment for the census.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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