The 2019 national population and housing census will cover more than 95 million people and 25 million households, said Director General of the General Statistics Office (GSO) Nguyen Bich Lam.

A census worker interviews a household 

The once-in-a-decade census, scheduled from April 1 to 25, 2019, holds particular importance because it will gather a large amount of information to serve as a basis for implementing strategic tasks.

Additionally, similar surveys are unlikely to be conducted from 2029 as all administrative data will be gathered online after this census, Lam said.

The census will cover all Vietnamese residing in Vietnam’s territory, those legally in other countries, deaths from February 16 this year (or the first day of the first lunar month in 2018) to March 31, 2019, and households’ places of residence.

Census workers will come to each household to interview residents, or households with accounts and passwords will fill in online forms.

The GSO leader said agencies are preparing for the census. The Ministry of Information and Communications and relevant sides will have to ensure data security since IT will be a big feature of this census.

Preliminary results will be announced in July the same year, while the complete results will be released in the second quarter of 2020. Reports on thematic analyses will be publicised in the fourth quarter of 2020.

This will be the eighth census to be organised by the GSO so far. The previous ones were in 1960 and 1974 in the northern region, 1976 in the southern region, and 1979, 1989, 1999 and 2009 nationwide.-VNA