Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, has stated that the 2021 Population and Housing Census will help determine the country's socioeconomic status.

He said that the exercise is key to determine whether the country's classification of the economy as Lower-Middle Income in 2010 has changed.

Speaking to Evans Mensah on JoyNews' PM Express, Monday, the statistician indicated that the computation of the Per capita income (PCI) is dependent on the total number of people in the country, hence the need for citizens to partake in the national exercise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsQ8i_nWbbY

"Census undertaken is the basis from our democracy, development, dignity, disaggregation of data and the denominator [to calculating economic indicators].

"We cannot calculate the Per Capita Income of a country if we do not know its population. So currently, we have a Per Capita Income hovering around $2,300, and this is based on the population projection we have done since 2010 up to 2011.

"Definitely, over this period, the indicators we have used for the population projections sought of weakens in terms of the reliability because of the time span and that is why every 10 years, it is important to do an update of the count so that you can get the accurate Per Capita Income," he explained.

Ghana is currently conducting its sixth population census post-independence. The one-month long exercise is expected to end July 15, 2021.

Prof Annim also revealed that some enumerators who were deployed to undertake the census exercise have been verbally abused by some individual respondents.

According to him, the abuse came about as those respondents thought that the enumerators had intruded on their homes.

He, however, stated that the verbal abuse case is an isolated one which has been dealt with by officials.

“In one of the instances, the respondent felt that the enumerator should have sought permission before chalking the structure…. and so for some reason, they were verbal and in one instance, we heard there was some minimal verbal assault,” he said.

Prof Annim stated that to avoid such verbal attacks from happening, the enumerators were required to seek permission from respondents before carrying on with the exercise.

He also appealed to all and sundry to get involved as the census data are critical to Ghana's planning and development.