Informal Businesses

The Informal Sector Enterprise Surveys are produced by the Enterprise Analysis Unit to measure the characteristics and activities of unregistered businesses. Informal businesses are found everywhere and play a significant role in economic activity. However, they are generally missing from official records, listings of active businesses, and business-level surveys.

The Informal Sector Enterprise ­­Surveys fill this data gap by following a rigorous survey methodology that fits the unique characteristics of the sector. The surveys use tailored questionnaires and a geographically-based sampling strategy, Adaptive Cluster Sampling, which discovers these businesses while also obtaining representative samples.

The indicators provide a snapshot using all completed Informal Sector Enterprise Surveys. To see the Profile of Cities, summarizing results by economy, please see Coverage below. Raw and indicator data at the business level are available on the data portal, both by economy and across. 

Resources

The following table summarizes where Informal Sector Enterprise Surveys have been conducted to date. All the raw and indicator data at the business level are available on the data portal, both by economy and across.

 

Completed Surveys

Ongoing Surveys

East Asia & Pacific

Cambodia: Battambang, Phnom Penh, Siemreap and Siahnoukville

IndonesiaJakarta, Surabaya, Denpasar, Medan, Pontianak, and Makassar

Lao PDR: Pakse, Vientiane

 

 

Latin America & Caribbean

PeruLima and Trujillo

 

Middle East & North Africa

Iraq: Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Sulaymaniyah

 

South Asia         

BangladeshDhaka, Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar

India: Hyderabad, Jaipur,  Kochi,  Ludhiana,  Mumbai,  Sehore,  Surat,  Tezpur,  Varanasi

Nepal: Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Dhankuta, Janakpur, Birgunj, Pokhara, Butwal, and Nepalgunj

 

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central African Republic: Bangui, Berberati

Ghana: Accra, Kumasi, Tamale

Mozambique: Beira, Maputo, Nampula

Somalia: Basaso, Mogadishu

Sudan: Khartoum, Omdurman, Port Sudan

TanzaniaDar es Salaam

Zambia: Kitwe, Lusaka, Ndola

Zimbabwe: Harare

Democratic Republic of Congo: Kinshasa, Bunia, Bukavu, Goma, Matadi, Mbuji-Mayi, Kananga, Kisangani and Lubumbashi

Prior to 2015, several informal surveys were conducted, primarily using a convenience sampling approach. In particular, in EAP: Cambodia, in LAC: Argentina, Guatemala, Peru, in MENA: Arab Republic of Egypt, in SAR: Afghanistan, in AFR: Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Rwanda. Please note that informal sector business surveys were also conducted in Myanmar and Nepal, and the businesses were identified through simple area-based sampling.

 

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