For the first time in more than two decades, Pakistan has produced a national economic census. It counted over 7.1 million companies and the Pakinomist-brand nearly 40 million structures, making it the largest digitization exercise in South Asia. Government officials have presented it as a landmark step towards building a reliable statistical framework of the economy. But behind the headline figures, experts say the report also postpone serious blind spots and contradictions that raise questions about how useful the data set will be for decision making.
The last economic census in Pakistan was implemented in 2000. Since then, the country’s economy has transformed, but decision makers have had to rely on outdated estimates and patched investigations.
That’s why Bilal Gilani, CEO of Gallup Pakistan, sees the new census as historical. “It is wonderful that this has finally happened after 23 years. The world has changed dramatically during that time, yet we were still dependent on outdated figures. This gives a digital baseline that Pakistan has never had before,“ he said.
The census was integrated with the 7th population and housing in 2023. By combining the two, the government says the saved RS7 billion. Councils equipped with digital tablets Pakinomist brand 38.3 million structures, 79 percent of which were housing and 13.4 percent were economic. A total of 7,142,941 companies were documented and employed 25.3 million workers.
Dr. Lubna Naz, professor of finance and director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at IBA, described the extent of the effort as both impressive and unfinished. “It is both a milestone and an ongoing work. The integration of seven million companies into a single digital framework and Pakinomist-tagging 40 million structures is unprecedented, but the data needs to be further strengthened before they can serve as a robust base for politics, ”she said.
But how the census was carried out, its methods, tools and control are as important as the numbers themselves.
Methodology, discrepancies and AI’s role
The census marked Pakistan’s first attempt to fully digitize financial counting. By integrating the exercise with the population census, counters could be able to collect data on companies, while also registering household information using digital tablets for Pakinomist-tagging.
However, reliability became a challenge. More than half of all items, 52 percent, were originally registered as “others” due to vague activity descriptions, misspellings or Roman urdu. To solve this, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) turned into artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing to clean and classify the data.
Testing showed uneven results. In Lahore, early trials revealed that the algorithm only achieved 24.68 percent accuracy in matching companies with their correct industrial codes. After revisions, the rate was improved to 85.23 percent in Karachi and 86.50 percent in Faisalabad.
Nationwide, the final model was implemented with an estimated accuracy of about 80 percent. On a data set of over seven million companies, margins mean that as many as 1.4 million could be misleading.
Dr. Naz questioned the procedure: “The process was dependent on limited testing in three city centers that limit its representativeness. Large parts of Pakistan’s linguistic and regional diversity may not have been adequately caught,” she explained.
Gilani seemed a more forgiving view. “What matters is that a baseline has been created. Even with some mislassifications, this is a leap forward compared to having no census at all,” he said.
What the census leaves
In addition to classification challenges, experts say the bigger question lies in what the census excluded. The methodology covered companies in fixed structures and household -based activities such as embroidery, tailoring, poultry, teaching and home food production. But it did not count mobile suppliers, street stalls, small beauty salons or the rapidly growing sector of freelancers and digital businesses.
Dr. Naz warned that this is leaning the picture: “Many unstructured activities fall within services, retail or small -scale production. By leaving them, the census is the apparent weight of the economy against more formal sectors. Women’s contributions are particularly statistically visible but economically invisible because no economic values were recorded,” she said.
The report recognizes this weakness. Household activities were registered, but 40.49 percent fell into a category of “miscellaneous” miscellaneous “. This means that almost half of the household economy remains unclassified and effectively unknown.
Contradictions and deviations
A deeper review of the report reveals discrepancies between different data tables and classifications.
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Educational match: Adding the unit types gives a total of 290,729 educational institutions (242,616 schools, 11,568 colleges, 214 universities and 36,331 mattresses). Yet under the industrial classification number 326,868. This leaves over 36,000 companies inexplicable.
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Health Disagreement: Hospitals are considered 119,789 companies, but under the industrial codes for human health and social work, the number increases to 123,973. The report does not give a breakdown to unite this gap.
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Mosque work strength anomaly: The census counts 600,403 mosques employing 2.06 million people more than the entire factory sector. But it is unclear whether this includes volunteers, carers or teachers, making the figure difficult to interpret.
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Structures vs companies: The census documents about 6.3 million economic structures, but over 7.1 million companies. This involves an average of 1.13 companies per year. Structure, confirming that many seats, markets and several -storey buildings host more companies. Nevertheless, the report does not analyze this density, which lacks an opportunity to shed light on commercial clusters in Pakistan’s cities.
These contradictions point to weaknesses in how the data was cleaned, tabulated and presented.
Geo-Tagging: A Digital First
One of the most announced results of the census was Pakinomist-tagging. Councils recorded the GPS coordinates for nearly 40 million structures throughout Pakistan, which for the first time enabled a Pakinomist-refined mapping of companies.
Gilani sees this as a digital breakthrough: “It’s an important achievement. For the first time, every store and establishment is literally on the map. This can change how Pakistan is planning his urban and commercial growth,” he said.
Dr. NAZ called for caution: “Geo-tagging has a real promise of urban planning and investment target direction, but it is only as good as the classifications that are linked to it. If the activity codes are inconsistent, you must connect them with coordinates not solve the reliability problem,” she said.
Lack of Depth: Finance and Gender
Another large gorge is the absence of economic and gender -disabled data. The census records the number of companies and their workforce but does not measure income, investment or sources of financing. This makes it impossible to assess the financial value of household -based companies or their sustainability.
Dr. Naz emphasized the implications: “By not making money from household -based work, Pakistan misses crucial insight into home -based businesses, limiting decision makers’ ability to design effective credit, education and business support programs,” she said.
The lack of gender data is also a problem. Without collapse of male and female workers in companies, the census cannot exactly capture the role of women in the economy. This makes their contributions both visible in number, yet invisible in value.
The risk of standing still
Globally, economic censuses are brought regularly. India and Bangladesh are already using them to capture funding, investments and digital companies. Although Pakistan’s exercise, although important, risks being a disposable if not institutionalized.
Dr. Naz warned: “If Pakistan does not repeat and improve its economic census, it will face political blind spots and lose competitiveness in new sectors such as e-commerce and freelancing, where women and young people are most active.”
Gilani agreed that continuity is important, although he emphasized the importance of the progress already made. For him, the census marks the beginning of a digital statistical system that Pakistan must now build on.
A foundation to build on on
The Economic Census 2023 is undeniable historical: the first in more than two decades, the first digital and the largest of its kind in South Asia. It provides a baseline image of Pakistan’s economy that did not exist before.
Still, its shortcomings are equally important. Contradictions between tables, deviations in workforce numbers, exclusions of informal and digital sectors and a great dependence on imperfect AI raising all questions about how much weight politicians should place on his findings.
When Dr. Naz summed up, it is best seen as both a breakthrough and an ongoing work. The real test will be whether Pakistan can refine, repeat and extend this effort to a reliable system. Currently, the country has a digital framework in its economy. Whether this framework is robust enough to support healthy financial decisions remains uncertain.
