and was carried out with technical and financial support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).The survey was carried out in the framework of a technical grant between ADB and NSB for theimprovement of the statistical system of Bhutan. The main scope of this grant was to developthe technical capabilities of the NSB. The BLSS survey was carried out by NSB staff trained by ADBc<strong>on</strong>sultants who also supervised the various phases of the survey.The NSB plans to repeat the survey in 2008. The new round will hopefully be financed by thegovernment in recogniti<strong>on</strong> of the importance of the kind of data collected with this survey. Itis difficult to evaluate the quality of the data without a deeper study but the resp<strong>on</strong>se rate isan impressive 97 percent, and the NSB seems very alert to the issue of data quality and ways toimprove the quality of some of the data in the next round of the survey.The Bhutan Living Standard Survey 2003 was an improved versi<strong>on</strong> of the Pilot Household Income andExpenditure Survey (HIES) carried out in 2000.The BLSS was designed to collect informati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> c<strong>on</strong>sumpti<strong>on</strong> expenditure from the householdsin order to assess people’s well-being and to c<strong>on</strong>struct a poverty line for the country. Moreover,BLSS collected data <strong>on</strong> housing, employment, health status, fertility, educati<strong>on</strong>, access to publicfacilities, assets ownership, service provisi<strong>on</strong>, and prices <strong>on</strong> various commodities. The questi<strong>on</strong>nairewhich is reprinted at the back of the publicati<strong>on</strong> indicates that the data is c<strong>on</strong>siderably richer thanwhat is included in the publicati<strong>on</strong>.The geographical coverage extended to the entire area of Bhutan except for two rural areas thatwere excluded for security reas<strong>on</strong>s. The populati<strong>on</strong> coverage included all households in the countryexcept diplomatic and expatriate households; members of cohabitati<strong>on</strong> situati<strong>on</strong>s (m<strong>on</strong>asteries,nunneries, hospitals, etc.); barracks of military and para-military forces, including the police.In order to establish a representative sample, the entire country was divided into three regi<strong>on</strong>s based<strong>on</strong> the number of households and their geographic locati<strong>on</strong>. Each regi<strong>on</strong> was divided into sevenstrata (four urban and three rural). The final sample size for the survey was 4,120 households.The survey was carried out by a network of supervisors and enumerators who were trained in allaspects of the survey. This good preparati<strong>on</strong> was reflected in the very low n<strong>on</strong>-resp<strong>on</strong>se rate of2.7 percent.As the Labour Force Survey <strong>on</strong>ly collects informati<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> employed pers<strong>on</strong>s, the best source of data<strong>on</strong> the n<strong>on</strong>-formal sector is probably the BLSS. The 2003 BLSS questi<strong>on</strong>naire included questi<strong>on</strong>s thatmight make it possible to estimate, though very roughly, the percentage of households involvedin n<strong>on</strong>-formal cottage or household industries. The 2003 survey included a module (Block 10 –Home-produced n<strong>on</strong> food items) <strong>on</strong> the producti<strong>on</strong> of home items like textiles, bamboo products,wood products and cane products. The NSB did not publish the result for this module because ofthe poor quality of the data but the director is c<strong>on</strong>vinced that in the next round it will be possibleto invest in these aspects to improve the quality of data and to make estimates c<strong>on</strong>cerning theamount of home-made products and their value.As an output of the BLSS, the NSB has also recently published a Poverty Analysis Report (2004).Another major statistical achievement is the completi<strong>on</strong> of the Populati<strong>on</strong> Census, the findings ofwhich were published in 2006 (previous censuses were undertaken in 1969 and 1980). One of themain results of the Census will be the creati<strong>on</strong> of a system that links geographical and statistical73
informati<strong>on</strong>. The system will provide a powerful tool for designing accurate samples which, in turn,will improve the overall quality of data derived from sample surveys.In the future, NSB plans to enrich the system with different kinds of data such as the locati<strong>on</strong> ofenterprises and envir<strong>on</strong>mental data. The geographical system will become a powerful statisticaltool for planning and m<strong>on</strong>itoring of the territory and envir<strong>on</strong>ment of Bhutan, and the sociopoliticaldevelopment of the country.<str<strong>on</strong>g>Statistics</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>on</strong> <strong>Cultural</strong> <strong>Industries</strong>Framework for the Elaborati<strong>on</strong> of Nati<strong>on</strong>al Data Capacity Building Projects74
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