Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE)

The Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises, or ASUSE, is India's main official survey of small, unregistered-as-company businesses outside farming. Think of the roadside tea stall, the local tailor, the kirana shop, the small furniture workshop or the mobile repair shop. The survey counts how many such businesses exist, how many people they employ, how much value they produce and how they run. It is carried out by the National Statistics Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).

What does "unincorporated" mean?

A business is incorporated when it is registered as a company (for example, a private limited company under the Companies Act). It then becomes a separate legal person, with its own accounts filed with the government. An unincorporated business is not a company. It is run by a single owner (a proprietorship), by partners, by a self-help group, a cooperative, a society or a trust.

Most of India's small businesses are of this kind. They keep few written accounts, so the government cannot learn about them from official filings. The only way to know about them is to go and ask.

Why does it exist?

The unincorporated sector gives work to more than 12 crore people in India. It is a big part of the economy, but it is "invisible" in company records. Without a survey:

• The government would not know how many jobs these businesses create, or whether they are growing or shrinking.
• GDP (the total value of goods and services produced in the country) would be estimated by guesswork for this large part of the economy.
• Ministries such as MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) and Textiles would have no data to design schemes for small businesses.

Where did it come from?

Earlier, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) surveyed these businesses only once every five years or so, in special "rounds". Two important ones were:

• NSS 67th round (2010-11): a survey of unincorporated non-agricultural enterprises (excluding construction).
• NSS 73rd round (2015-16): it estimated about 6.33 crore such establishments with about 11.1 crore workers.

A five-year gap was too long for a fast-changing economy. So the NSO decided to run the survey every year, and named it ASUSE. The first full rounds were ASUSE 2021-22 and ASUSE 2022-23, whose results came out in 2024. The 2021-22 figures were pulled down by the second COVID-19 lockdown. Then came ASUSE 2023-24 (October 2023 to September 2024) and ASUSE 2025 (January to December 2025), whose results were released on 24 March 2026.

How does the survey work?

It follows a multi-stage stratified sampling method. In simple words, the country is first divided into groups, and a sample is picked from each group, so that the small sample still represents the whole country.

1. In rural areas, census villages are picked (in rural Kerala, Panchayat wards). In urban areas, small city blocks from the Urban Frame Survey are picked. These are called First Stage Units (FSUs).
2. Survey teams list every business in the selected FSUs.
3. A sample of establishments is chosen from this list and interviewed.
4. Data is entered on a tablet using CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing), which reduces errors from paper forms.

Most answers are taken by asking the owner about the last month (oral enquiry), because small businesses rarely keep accounts. A few large establishments give yearly data from their audited books.

What does it cover?

• Area: All of rural and urban India, except remote villages of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• Sectors: Three broad sectors: Manufacturing, Trade and Other Services. Construction is excluded, and so is agriculture.
• Ownership types: Proprietorships, partnerships (but not Limited Liability Partnerships), self-help groups, cooperatives, societies and trusts.
• Information collected: number of workers, Gross Value Added (GVA), wages (emoluments) paid, fixed assets, loans, type of ownership, registration status and use of computers and the internet.

Key results of ASUSE 2025 (released March 2026)

• Establishments: about 7.92 crore, up 7.97% from 7.34 crore in ASUSE 2023-24.
• Workers: about 12.81 crore, up 6.18% (more than 74.52 lakh new jobs).
• GVA: about ₹19.93 lakh crore (current prices), up 10.87%. Share in GVA: Other Services 42%, Trade 37%, Manufacturing 21%.
• GVA per worker (a simple measure of productivity): ₹1,56,539, up 4.54%.
• Women-owned proprietary establishments: 27% (26.2% earlier).
• Establishments using the internet: 39.4%, up from 26.7%.
• Sample: about 6.70 lakh establishments in 24,153 FSUs.

What changed recently?

From ASUSE 2025, the sample size was increased about 1.5 times. This allowed two new things:

• Quarterly results: the NSO now publishes a Quarterly Bulletin on Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (QBUSE). The first one came out in September 2025.
• District-level estimates: by treating districts as the basic groups, participating states can get yearly figures for each district.

The NSO has also proposed moving the survey from the calendar year to the financial year (April to March) from April 2027, so that it matches GDP data better. New questions are planned on problems faced by women entrepreneurs, sources of electricity, long-term investment, and handloom, power-loom and handicraft units.

How does it help measure GDP?

In India's new GDP series (base year 2022-23, released on 27 February 2026), the value added by household businesses is now worked out directly from ASUSE and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). Earlier, MoSPI took a one-time base-year estimate and pushed it forward each year using indirect indicators. That older method was criticised because it assumed small businesses grew at the same pace as big companies. Direct survey data reduces this guesswork.

Commonly confused concepts

• ASUSE vs Annual Survey of Industries (ASI): ASI covers registered factories (under the Factories Act, 1948), which are the organised manufacturing sector. ASUSE covers unincorporated businesses in manufacturing, trade and services. Together they give a fuller picture of non-farm business.
• ASUSE vs Economic Census: The Economic Census is a complete count of all non-farm establishments in the country, done once in several years. The first was in 1977; the 6th was in 2013 and the 7th in 2019-21. ASUSE is a sample survey done every year, which goes deeper into each business (value added, wages, assets). The Economic Census gives the "list" from which samples can be drawn; ASUSE gives the detailed "health check".
• ASUSE vs PLFS: The Periodic Labour Force Survey asks households about their members' jobs. ASUSE asks businesses about their workers and output. One looks at workers from the home side; the other from the workplace side.
• Unincorporated vs informal vs unorganised: These are close but not identical. "Unincorporated" is a legal idea (not a company). "Informal sector" in official use usually means very small proprietary and partnership units. "Unorganised sector" is a broad Indian term for units not covered by formal laws and records. Most unincorporated businesses are informal, but some (like larger cooperatives) are not.

Issues, criticism and the way forward

• Memory-based answers: Most owners answer from memory, not accounts, so figures on income and value can be rough.
• Missing sectors: Construction, a huge employer of informal workers, is left out, as is agriculture.
• Comparison problems: Changing survey periods (financial year, October to September, calendar year) make year-on-year comparison harder. The planned move to April-March aims to fix this.
• Frame problem: The quality of any sample depends on a good, up-to-date list of businesses. The 7th Economic Census results were delayed because many states did not approve them, which weakened this list. A fresh Economic Census and a business register are meant to solve this.
• Way forward: Experts suggest linking ASUSE with administrative records such as GST and Udyam (MSME) registration, publishing data on time, and keeping methods stable so that trends can be trusted.

Concepts to Know

• Gross Value Added (GVA): The value a business adds by its work: what it sells minus what it spent on materials and services bought from others. If a tailor sells a shirt for ₹500 using cloth and thread worth ₹300, the value added is ₹200.
• Sample survey: Asking a carefully chosen small group to learn about a large population, like tasting one spoon to check the whole pot of dal.
• Establishment: A single business unit at one location, such as one shop or one workshop.
• Emoluments: Wages, salaries and other payments made to hired workers.
• Own-account vs hired-worker establishment: An own-account unit is run only by the owner and family without hired workers; a hired-worker unit employs at least one paid worker.
• Urban Frame Survey (UFS) block: A small, fixed area of a town mapped by the NSO, used to pick urban samples.