Full figures from island’s final census ready by March

The full results of the 2021 census will be ready by March 2024, a Statistical service (Cystat) representative said on Tuesday, meaning they will meet a hard deadline set by the European Union’s statistical service, Eurostat, for all the Union’s member states to submit population data.

In addition, it is expected that the 2021 census will be the last “traditional” census of its kind to take place in the Republic of Cyprus.

In its place, Cystat hopes to create a “dynamic statistical population register” which will be updated on an ongoing basis. The register will take statistics from various administrative sources within the Republic.

According to Cystat, the register will produce annual population data and demographic indicators, which they say will more easily facilitate state policy and planning.

A representative of Cystat did tell the Cyprus Mail that a census may be needed to collect some data, but that the overall plan is to do away with door-to-door visits altogether.

This has come to light after the process of collecting data for the last census was complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic and a lack of interest among the population to work as census-takers.

Under normal circumstances, Cystat would employ a total of 1,000 people to go from door to door, recording data on the people inside each and every house in the country.

However, in 2021 the number was “much lower” than usual, leading to the collection of data taking much longer than expected.

Furthermore, Cystat said the pandemic “inhibited the smooth development of the project”.

As a result, the planned deadline for census data collection, which was originally set for the end of December 2021, was missed. Data collection for the census was not completed until summer last year.

The data collected is still being analysed by Cystat, and while they hope hard statistics will be available by the end of the year, the hard deadline set by Eurostat is not until next March.

Cystat say they visited around 80 per cent of the country’s front doors while collecting data for the 2021 census, while collecting data on the rest of the country using available statistics from other government departments.

They added that “data validations” will continue to take place through personal and telephone interviews as well as the processing of information from available administrative sources until the final statistics are published.