History of the Statistical Centre of Iran
In July 1965, the Statistical Centre of Iran (SCI) was established by the Law approved by the National Consultative Assembly. According to the Law, the SCI was detached from the Ministry of the Interior. The Law recognized the SCI as an affiliated organ to the Plan Organization. According to this Law, the SCI was assigned to collect data through implementation of sample surveys and censuses, and all government agencies were duty-bound to provide the SCI with its required statistics and data. Preparation of national statistical yearbook became one of the SCI’s responsibilities. After approving the Law, the first national population and housing census was implemented in 1966 and a number of 25788722 people were counted in the census. In the same year, the first national statistical yearbook was released.
For the first time, the SCI implemented the annual census of large scale establishments (10 and more workers) in 1972. Since then, the census has been implemented with some changes up to now. The second Census of Formal Mines of the country was implemented in collaboration with the SCI and the Ministry of Industries and Mines in 1974. From 1965 to 1974, Plan Organization (was renamed Plan and Budget Organization) took into accounts regionalizing process of planning system in the country and as a result, at first it created 11 regions and gradually 23 state regions (based on the number of provinces). Accordingly, the SCI has organized statistical regions or units following such a new organization in the regions, in order to play a more coherent role in the process of managing the implementation of statistical surveys, and especially in the information collection stage.