He told a news conference at the GTV 11 studios in Georgetown that preparations were under way for the census to be carried out in accordance with the Statistics Act Chapter 19:02.

The last census was done in 1991 and censuses are normally carried out every 10 years. But due to the holding of national elections last year it was not feasible to carry out a census, the Chief Statistician explained.

Benjamin said the information gathered from a census is useful to the business community, investors and those agencies that are involved in State planning.

He pointed that while a country may have the resources and potential for investment, if the relevant information is not available investors may look elsewhere.

Businesses need information pertaining to the density of population and the type of activities that are prevalent in a particular community whenever they are considering setting up their operations in a particular location, he pointed out.

Benjamin explained that censuses comprise three phases - planning and preparation, execution and editing and processing of the collected data.

Sensitising the public through publicity campaigns will be accelerated, because the success of the census depends on the cooperation of the public and the involvement of all Guyanese, he said.

Collection of data will be done through house-to-house enumeration. "Every household and every community will be visited," he emphasised.

He said that because of geography, weather patterns and logistics the enumeration exercise in Region Nine (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo) has already been completed and the experience acquired there will be used to the benefit of the exercise in other regions.

About 3,000 enumerators and other personnel are expected to be recruited and undergo training for this national exercise.

Benjamin said that to make the enumeration manageable, the country has been divided into about 2,800 enumeration districts of about 100 households each.

Guyana is part of a regional census system which is coordinated by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Suriname and Guyana are the only two member states that have not completed their censuses, he reported.

He said no one country within the region has all the skills that are required to effectively carry out a census, so there is close collaboration to complement each other.

The territories also use the experience gained in other sister countries. One way in which this is done is having personnel from other member states participate in censuses in other states, Benjamin said.

Preparations for the population and housing census are being fine-tuned by the Bureau of Statistics for the house to house enumeration in September.

Benjamin said the enumerators will come from within the populace and the bureau's staff will supervise the exercise. In order to ensure that no community is under-covered or over-enumerated, maps of the location will be provided to each enumerator in which he/she is working, he told reporters.

International technical assistance is under way from Statistics Sweden, he said, adding that this will greatly enhance the technical capacity of the bureau and would enable the expeditious processing of data derived from the census.

Benjamin is projecting that this would materialise by the end of this year, while complete processing of the census data should be concluded by the second half of next year. The estimated cost of the census is $130M.

Chief Statistician of CARICOM, Mr. Osmond Gordon, also at the news conference, emphasised the importance and advantages of using a regional approach to the exercise, pointing out that many common factors characterise censuses.

He urged a collective approach to areas like training census personnel and designing questionnaires, which will result in saving resources, and more exchanging and sharing of experience.