Abstract

This survey was conducted in Afghanistan between May 2013 and July 2013 as part of the Enterprise Survey project, an initiative of the World Bank. The objective of the survey is to obtain feedback from enterprises on the state of the private sector as well as to help in building a panel of enterprise data that will make it possible to track changes in the business environment over time, thus allowing, for example, impact assessments of reforms. Through interviews with firms in the manufacturing and services sectors, the survey assesses the constraints to private sector growth and creates statistically significant business environment indicators that are comparable across countries.

The standard Enterprise Survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures. Over 90% of the questions objectively ascertain characteristics of a country's business environment. The remaining questions assess the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.

Geographic coverage

Kabul, Hirat, Kandahar, Mazar, Jalalabad

Analysis unit

The primary sampling unit of the study is the establishment. An establishment is a physical location where business is carried out and where industrial operations take place or services are provided. A firm may be composed of one or more establishments. For example, a brewery may have several bottling plants and several establishments for distribution. For the purposes of this survey an establishment must make its own financial decisions and have its own financial statements separate from those of the firm. An establishment must also have its own management and control over its payroll.

Universe

The whole population, or universe of the study, is the non-agricultural economy. It comprises: all manufacturing sectors according to the group classification of ISIC Revision 3.1: (group D), construction sector (group F), services sector (groups G and H), and transport, storage, and communications sector (group I). Note that this definition excludes the following sectors: financial intermediation (group J), real estate and renting activities (group K, except sub-sector 72, IT, which was added to the population under study), and all public or utilities-sectors.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sample for Afghanistan ES 2013 was selected using stratified random sampling. Three levels of stratification were used in this country: industry, establishment size, and region.

Industry stratification was designed in the way that follows: the universe was stratified into manufacturing, retail/wholesale, construction, and other services.

Size stratification was defined following the standardized definition for the rollout: small (5 to 19 employees), medium (20 to 99 employees), and large (more than 99 employees). For stratification purposes, the number of employees was defined on the basis of reported permanent full-time workers. This seems to be an appropriate definition of the labor force since seasonal/casual/part-time employment is not common practice, apart from the construction and agriculture sectors which are not included in the survey.

Regional stratification was defined in 5 regions (Kabul, Hirat, Kandahar, Mazar, Jalalabad) which include both city and the surrounding business areas.

The sample frame used in Afghanistan was combined from 3 sources. The list of manufacturing firms was obtained from the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) and was updated in April 2012. The list for retail firms was generated by the implementing contractor for the 5 cities of fieldwork. The construction/other services list was obtained from the implementing contractor and is largely based on firms registered with AISA.

The frame was used for the selection of a sample with the aim of achieving 360 interviews with establishments of five or more employees.

The percentage of confirmed non-eligible units as a proportion of the total number of sampled establishments contacted for the survey was 1.72% (70 out of 4,072 establishments).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The structure of the data base reflects the fact that 2 different versions of the questionnaire were used for 3 categories of businesses (manufacturing, retail, and other services/non-retail). The Manufacturing Questionnaire includes all common questions asked to all establishments and some specific questions relevant to manufacturing firms. The Services Questionnaire, administered to retail and other services/non-retail establishments, includes all common questions asked to all establishments and some specific questions relevant retail and other services firms. Each variation of the questionnaire is identified by the index variable, a0.

All variables are named using, first, the letter of each section and, second, the number of the variable within the section, i.e. a1 denotes section A, question 1. Variable names proceeded by a prefix "SAR" or "AFG" indicate questions specific to the South Asia region or Afghanistan only, therefore, they may not be found in the implementation of the rollout in other countries. All other suffixed variables are global and are present in all country surveys over the world. All variables are numeric with the exception of those variables with an "x" at the end of their names. The suffix "x" denotes that the variable is alpha-numeric.

Cleaning operations

Data entry and quality controls are implemented by the contractor and data is delivered to the World Bank in batches (typically 10%, 50% and 100%). These data deliveries are checked for logical consistency, out of range values, skip patterns, and duplicate entries. Problems are flagged by the World Bank and corrected by the implementing contractor through data checks, callbacks, and revisiting establishments.

Response rate

Survey non-response must be differentiated from item non-response. The former refers to refusals to participate in the survey altogether whereas the latter refers to the refusals to answer some specific questions. Enterprise Surveys suffer from both problems and different strategies were used to address these issues.

Item non-response was addressed by two strategies: a- For sensitive questions that may generate negative reactions from the respondent, such as corruption or tax evasion, enumerators were instructed to collect the refusal to respond as a different option from don’t know. b- Establishments with incomplete information were re-contacted in order to complete this information, whenever necessary.

Survey non-response was addressed by maximizing efforts to contact establishments that were initially selected for interview. Attempts were made to contact the establishment for interview at different times/days of the week before a replacement establishment (with similar strata characteristics) was suggested for interview. Survey non-response did occur but substitutions were made in order to potentially achieve strata-specific goals.