Georgetown: The Guyana Population and Housing Census 2012 Preliminary Results would be used to inform policymaking, Finance Minister, Dr Ashni Singh said on Monday.
“We believe in evidence-based policy, we believe understanding the dynamics of the population is critical to the formulation of policies, social policies, for example,” Dr Singh said as he delivered remarks during the launch ceremony for the 2012 Census Preliminary Report at the Guyana International Conference Centre, Liliendaal.
In addition to the Government, in the Private Sector, close attention is paid to the changing trends because of the implications for changing market opportunities. The Finance Minister explained that the growth in the population will guide investments made by the Private Sector. “What will be demanded? What goods and services would be demanded, as the profile of the population evolves and how should we prepare ourselves best to take advantage of those emerging opportunities.”
Dr. Singh said Guyanese should not take the report at face value, noting that they should dive into the profiles of each region and pay keen attention to the age, education and employment profiles of persons living within Guyana.
The Guyana Population and Housing Census 2012 Preliminary Report indicates that the country on September 15, 2012, had a population of 747,884 persons when compared to 751,223 persons in the 2002 count.
While a detailed analysis of the country’s employment and unemployment rates was not included in the preliminary report, the Chief Statistician Lennox Benjamin told the press that information on the ethnic makeup of the country, in addition to the education and employment profiles of the population would be made available with the release of the final 2012 Population and Housing Census Report by the second quarter of 2015. “In every census, we do detail the ethnic breakdown of the population, but that as well as the composition of the foreign born population will come in our next major report.” He, however, disclosed that migration was among the factors that led to the reduction in the country’s population.
In August 2012, the Finance Minister signed the mandatory Census Order and Regulations in keeping with Chapter 19:09 of the Statistics Act, designating September 15, 2012 as Census Day.
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