Ahead of the long anticipated national census, the Central Statistical Agency has invested 29.5 million Br in expanding its facilities.

The Agency built a conference hall, a training centre and renovated its library at its premises in Piassa along General Wingate Street. The construction of the conference hall and the training centre took two years, while the renovation of the library was completed in six months.

The construction and the renovation work is expected to enhance the organisational, infrastructural and human capacity of the Agency, according to Jemal Hassen, project manager of the Statistics for Results Project (SFR). The facilities renovation project is part of a larger, World Bank-financed institutional and resource capacity building project launched in 2014 with a 15-million-dollar budget. The overall project is being managed by SFR operating under the Central Statistical Agency.

"It will help the Agency to deliver reliable, accessible and timely statistical data," Jemal told Fortune.

Satowa Trading & Engineering was engaged for seven million Birr to renovate the training centre, which can accommodate 200 trainees at a time. The centre will provide training for branch office staff and census data collectors. The facility has five syndicated rooms that can be used for different purposes.

As the main government office specialising in the collection of data and statistics, the Agency plans to offer training to other government offices on database management and data registration systems, according to Jemal.

The construction of the conference hall, which has the capacity to accommodate 500 people, was completed by local contractor Friends Engineering Works. The 20-million-Br conference hall has a video conference centre connected to branch offices that facilitate new methods of data collection.

The Agency, which has conducted three national censuses, has been holding its meetings and training seminars at hotels and rented facilities, according to Jemal.  "It used to cost us a huge amount of money," he said.