Vice Premier Li Keqiang said on Monday the second national economic census was essential to promote the strategic and structural adjustment of the economy, highlighting the concerted efforts of government organs to accomplish the task.

Li, a member of the new team of officials who will steer through policies to spread economic prosperity and combat pollution, was recently appointed director of the leading group of the country's second economic census.

The census will help form the basis of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).

Addressing a video conference on preparations for the census, scheduled to begin on December 31, Li said the results of the survey would be an important reference for future macro-economic controls and corporate activities.

He said it would be difficult to gather data on the service, energy and resources sectors because there had been wide gaps in the development of these industries in recent years and of the statistical methods used to keep accurate records.

He made it clear that the goal of the census was to obtain integrated data on the service industry, also known as the tertiary sector, and gain a thorough understanding of the intensity of energy and water consumption by the secondary and tertiary sectors.

Xie Fuzhan, head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the upcoming census would be different from the previous one as all the enterprises in the second and tertiary industries would be involved in the investigation on energy and water consumption while only large enterprises were involved during the first census.

A survey of general-purpose equipment would be implemented in all high energy-consuming industries. Industry and commerce administrations, tax offices, quality watchdogs and civil affair departments would team up for a "carpet investigation" on every enterprises involved, he added.

China's first national economic census began in December 2004. It was designed to give an economic overview of the country's fast-expanding secondary and tertiary industries and complete a database covering all economic sectors such as construction, transportation and scientific research.

About eight million industrial enterprises and more than 30 million private businesses would be involved in the second census, said Xie. It was not revealed how many people would work for the census starting at the end of the year.

The census was divided into three phases: the preparation phase which would end on December 31, the data collection and analysis phase which would start from January 2009 and end in September, and the publication of results, which would last for about three months, according to the NBS.

Yuan Gangming, department head of economy research institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said the major problem in data collection could lie with sample sites as statistics collected and submitted to the central government were not always accurate.

"There has been some misunderstanding about the accuracy of the statistics released by the central government. In fact they are usually reliable as the central government keeps an eye on the overall economy while the accuracy of numbers offered by other sources usually depend on how they are reported," the researcher said.

Wang Tongsan, an economist with CASS, said the changes and new content in the planned census reflected the government's determination to carry out an overall scientific survey on the economy. He added that China's current accounting method complied with standards set up by the United Nations.

At Monday's conference, officials from the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance assured the vice premier of their active participation in the second national economic census.

(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2008)