Saturday, February 28, 2009

Service Sector in India - Operational Characteristics of Enterprises, 2006 -07

The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has released Report No. 528 giving operational characteristics of service sector enterprises (excluding trade) in India, 2006-07 based on data of NSS 63rd round. The fieldwork of the survey was carried out during July 2006-June 2007. The survey covered the whole of the Indian Union except (i) Leh (Ladakh), Kargil, Punch and Rajauri districts of Jammu & Kashmir, (ii) interior villages of Nagaland situated beyond five kilometres of bus route and (iii) villages of Andaman and Nicobar Islands which remain inaccessible throughout the year.

The term ‘service sector enterprises’ under the coverage of 63rd round basically referred to all service sector enterprises, other than government and public sector undertakings and those covered under Annual Survey of Industries(ASI). The enterprises engaged in trading activities are also out of the coverage of the survey. The services covered in the survey comprise of hotels and restaurants, storage and warehousing, transport and communication, financial intermediation, real estate, renting and other business activities, education, health and social work and other community, social and personal services, etc. A dual frame approach was followed in the survey with a view to improving the reliability of the overall estimates by separating out apparently large units into one frame (list frame) and covering the remaining units within the coverage through the area frame. While a list of financial sector enterprises and a list of other service sector enterprises comprising relatively large units constituted the list frame, other enterprises (other than list frame enterprises) located in all the villages and urban blocks within the geographical coverage constituted the area frame. From the area frame 13,271 sample villages/urban blocks were surveyed. In all 1,90,282 sample enterprises were actually surveyed out of which 438 enterprises belonged to list frame and 189844 belonged to sample villages/urban blocks of area frame.

The survey coverage and results thereof in this report are presented in respect of two broad categories of enterprises viz. the enterprises, which are run without any hired worker on a fairly regular basis, termed as “Own Account Enterprises (OAEs)” and those run with at least one hired worker on a fairly regular basis, termed as “Establishments (Estt.)”.  

The present report is the first one in a series of two reports planned to be brought out based on the survey. Apart from information on estimated number of enterprises and number of workers, the report discusses the operational characteristics of the enterprises like location of enterprise, maintenance of accounts, number of working hours, nature of operation, status of registration etc. at all India level for different activity categories and at the level of States / UTs for all the activity categories taken together.

 

Major findings of the survey from the present NSS Report No. 528 are noted below:
An estimated 1.65 crore (1 crore = 107) service sector enterprises were in operation in India during 2006-07. Of these enterprises, 60% (0.99 crore) were in rural India and 40% (0.66 crore) in urban India. The OAEs constituted 85% of all enterprises and the remaining 15% were Establishments. 
Uttar Pradesh had the highest share (14%) in total number of enterprises followed by West Bengal (13%), Andhra Pradesh (10%), Maharashtra (9%) and Tamil Nadu (7%). These five states accounted for 53% of enterprises at all-India level.  

Service Sector is one of the prime engagers of workforce in the economy. According to the survey results, about 3.35 crore persons were estimated to be working in service sector enterprises during 2006-07. Nearly 54% of these persons belonged to rural sector.
Uttar Pradesh had the highest share (12%) of workers in service sector enterprises of the country closely followed by Andhra Pradesh (11%), Maharashtra (10%), West Bengal (10%) and Tamil Nadu (9%). About 52% of all workers were concentrated in these five States. 

 

Top segments of the service sector in terms of workers were ‘transport, storage and communication’ (25%), ‘financial intermediation’ (17%) and ‘hotels and restaurants’ (15%) followed by ‘other community, social and personal services activities’ (15%) and ‘education’ ( 12%). Except for ‘transport, storage and communication, rural–urban differential with respect to number of workers was significant in respect of all other broad activities.  

 
About 90 % of enterprises were proprietary enterprises and 7% were cooperative societies and self help groups. About 59 % of enterprises were not registered with any agency. The propensity of non-registration of enterprises was 63% each in case of rural enterprises as well as OAEs. About 74 % of enterprises had fixed premises of operation. Of these, about 32% were located within household premises. Nearly 99 % of enterprises were perennial enterprises.
About 86 % of all enterprises did not receive any assistance from any government or non-government agencies. Out of the 14% enterprises receiving such assistance loan was the most dominant type of assistance (12%). About 43% of all enterprises reported not having faced any specific problem in their day-to-day operations. However, among the remaining enterprises, “Competition from larger units” and “shortage of capital” were the two main problems faced by the enterprises. 
About 2 % of enterprises had undertaken at least some work on contract basis and also nearly 32 % of enterprises had undertaken some other economic activity. About 5% of enterprises were pursuing mixed activity i.e. the multiple activities from the same enterprise without accounts being separable.
About 81% of working owners or managing partners of proprietary and partnership enterprises were literate with some formal education. Even in rural areas, literacy with some formal education was as high as 77%. However, only about 10% of enterprises were maintaining accounts.

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