An Enterprise Survey is a firm-level survey of a representative sample of an economy's private sector. Firm-level surveys have been conducted since 2002 by different units within the World Bank. Since 2005-06, most data collection efforts have been centralized within the Enterprise Analysis Unit. Data is used to create indicators that benchmark the quality of the business and investment climate across countries.
Abstract
The Kenya Enterprise Survey was conducted between May and July 2007. The research is based on a representative sample of 657 formal firms and 124 informal establishments. The sample was drawn in four locations (Nairobi, Mombasa,Nakuru, and Kisumu) and covered both manufacturing and services sectors.
The objective of the survey is to obtain feedback from enterprises in client countries 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 face-to-face 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.
Kind of Data
Sample survey data [ssd]
Unit of Analysis
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.
Coverage
Geographic Coverage
National
Universe
The whole population, or the universe, covered in the Enterprise Surveys is the non-agricultural economy. It comprises: all manufacturing sectors according to the ISIC Revision 3.1 group classification (group D), construction sector (group F), services sector (groups G and H), and transport, storage, and communications sector (group I). Note that this population 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.
Producers and sponsors
Primary investigators
Name
World Bank
Funding Agency/Sponsor
Name
World Bank
Other Identifications/Acknowledgments
Name
EEC Canada
Sampling
Sampling Procedure
The study used stratified simple random sampling for the formal economy (registered establishments with more than 4 workers), and simple random sampling for the micro firms (non-registered establishments with less than 5 employees). Close to 60% of the formal sample is represented by manufacturing firms. Within manufacturing food (17 percent), garments (12 percent) and other manufacturing (31 percent) represent individual strata. Outside the manufacturing sector, the retail sector account for 19 percent of the sample and less than a quarter of the firms belong to the rest of services stratum.
The sample was drawn in four locations: Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, and Kisumu. Size stratification for formal firms was defined following the standardized definition used for the Enterprise Surveys: 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.
For establishments with five or more full-time permanent paid employees, the universe was stratified according to the following categories of industry:
1. Manufacturing: Food and Beverages (Group D, sub-group 15);
2. Manufacturing: Garment (Group D, sub group 18);
3. Manufacturing: Other Manufacturing (Group D excluding sub-groups 15 and 18);
4. Retail Trade: (Group G, sub-group 52);
5. Rest of the universe, including:
• Construction (Group F);
• Wholesale trade (Group G, sub-group 51);
• Hotels, bars and restaurants (Group H);
• Transportation, storage and communications (Group I);
• Computer related activities (Group K, sub-group 72).
The sampling frame was obtained from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce, the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, and from the Federation of Kenya Employers. The lists were merged together into a master list which was validated, updated where possible, and then used to establish the initial population size for each stratum. The final population size in all strata and locations was 6562 with the vast majority of establishments operating in the rest of the universe, and manufacturing strata.
The sample also includes panel data collected from establishments surveyed in the 2003 Kenya Investment Climate Survey (ICS). That survey included establishments in all three manufacturing strata distributed across the entire country. In order to collect the largest possible set of panel data, an attempt was made to contact and survey every establishment in the panel, provided it was located in one of the four cities covered by this survey and operated in the universe under study.
The remainder of the sample (including the entire rest of universe and retail sample in each city) was selected at random from the master list by a computer program.
In this survey, the micro establishment stratum covers all establishments of the targeted categories of economic activity with less than 5 employees. The implementing agency, EEC Canada, selected an aerial sampling approach to estimate the population of establishments and select the sample in this stratum for all regions of the survey.
The following procedure was followed for the sampling of micro establishments:
1. Step 1: districts and specific zones of each district with a high concentration of micro establishments were identified;
2. Step 2: a count of all micro establishments in these specific zones was conducted;
3. Step 3: the count by zone was converted into one list of sequential numbers for the whole survey region and a virtual list was created with establishments numbers;
4. Step 4: a computer program performed a random selection of establishments numbers from that virtual list;
5. Step 5: based on the ratio between the number selected in each specific zone and the total population in that zone, a skip rule was created and applied for selecting the corresponding establishments in each zone.
Enumerators applied the skip rule defined for that zone as well as how to select replacements in the event of refusal or other cause of non-participation.
Weighting
Weights were used in the analysis of the data to ensure full representativeness of the results.
Data Collection
Dates of Data Collection
Start
End
2007-05
2007-07
Data Collection Mode
Face-to-face [f2f]
Data Collection Notes
Private contractors conduct the Enterprise Surveys on behalf of the World Bank. Due to sensitive survey questions addressing business-government relations and corruption-related topics, private contractors are preferred over any government agency or an organization/institution associated with government, and are hired by the World Bank to collect the data.
The Enterprise Surveys are usually implemented following a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, a screener questionnaire is applied over the phone to determine eligibility and to make appointments; in the second stage, a face-to-face interview takes place with the Manager/Owner/Director of each establishment. Sometimes the survey respondent calls company accountants and human resource managers into the interview to answer questions in the sales and labor sections of the survey.
All Enterprise Surveys are conducted in the local languages.
Data Collectors
Name
Abbreviation
Etude Economique Conseil
EEC Canada
Questionnaires
Questionnaires
The current survey instruments are available:
- Core Questionnaire + Manufacturing Module [ISIC Rev.3.1: 15-37]
- Core Questionnaire + Retail Module [ISIC Rev.3.1: 52]
- Core Questionnaire [ISIC Rev.3.1: 45, 50, 51, 55, 60-64, 72]
- Micro Establishments Questionnaire (for establishments with 1 to 4 employees).
The "Core Questionnaire" is the heart of the Enterprise Survey and contains the survey questions asked of all firms across the world. There are also two other survey instruments - the "Core Questionnaire + Manufacturing Module" and the "Core Questionnaire + Retail Module." The survey is fielded via three instruments in order to not ask questions that are irrelevant to specific types of firms, e.g. a question that relates to production and nonproduction workers should not be asked of a retail firm. In addition to questions that are asked across countries, all surveys are customized and contain country-specific questions. An example of customization would be including tourism-related questions that are asked in certain countries when tourism is an existing or potential sector of economic growth.
The 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, registration, and performance measures. The questionnaire also assesses the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.
Access policy
Contacts
Email
enterprisesurveys@worldbank.org
Confidentiality
Confidentiality of the survey respondents and the sensitive information they provide is necessary to ensure the greatest degree of survey participation, integrity and confidence in the quality of the data. Surveys are usually carried out in cooperation with business organizations and government agencies promoting job creation and economic growth, but confidentiality is never compromised.
Access conditions
Aggregate indicators based on Enterprise Survey data are available to the public at https://www.enterprisesurveys.org
Firm-level data is also available to the public free-of-charge. In order to access the firm-level data, users must agree to abide by a strict confidentiality agreement available through Enterprise Analysis Unit website by clicking on "External users register here" at https://www.enterprisesurveys.org/Portal
Citation requirements
Where necessary please site the source as "Enterprise Analysis Unit - World Bank Group https://www.enterprisesurveys.org"
Disclaimer and copyrights
Disclaimer
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.