MINSK, 22 August (BelTA) - Chairwoman of the National Statistical Committee Inna Medvedeva told the media about the preparations for the country’s next population census, BelTA has learned.
Regarding the new census round, Inna Medvedeva noted that in June 2025, the UN Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution on the 2030 World Population and Housing Census Programme, which calls on all member participants to conduct a population census. “Belarus, which strictly adheres to the ten-year interval, conducts its population census in the year ending with a nine. Accordingly, we are already preparing for the 2029 population census. A key focus of our work today is to revise legislation, namely the law “On the Population Census”. We need to update it, taking into account the 2019 census and its outcomes. We also need to incorporate the most current issues, which involve the maximum use of administrative resources,” she emphasized.
The National Statistical Committee of Belarus plans to conduct a combined census, as in the previous edition. “This means the use of the internet and tablets. We hope that in 2029 a much larger percentage of people will complete the census online. We are also considering the application of artificial intelligence at certain stages of data processing,” the head of the committee head. “We will use administrative resources and pre-filled data, but there will also be questions that an individual will need to answer personally. These are questions that largely concern employment and migration activity, as people are quite mobile today.”
The online census was conducted for the first time in 2019, and this practice showed very good results, Inna Medvedeva stressed. “22% of Belarus' population independently filled out the questionnaire online. Moreover, the census form filled out in this format is the most complete, as the software product did not allow for any questions to be left unanswered,” she noted. “Considering that we were moving towards a paperless census, both on tablets and online, we had logical and arithmetic controls in place that allowed us to achieve the maximum quality of the results obtained. In this regard, it can be unequivocally stated that the online forms were of the highest quality, both in terms of completeness and the responses we received from the population of Belarus.”
According to her, back in 2019, the head of state set the task of transitioning to register-based censuses, meaning without direct questions to the population. “However, given that not all administrative resources yet allow us to obtain maximum and complete answers to certain census questions, this time we will try to further improve these services in order to transition to a register-based census next time,” Inna Medvedeva said.
The National Statistical Committee of Belarus is working closely with state bodies - the owners of administrative data sources. In particular, it is analyzing the composition, structure, and quality of their data for subsequent use in conducting the population census.
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