How to Find and Cite Nepal's Official Statistics: A Practical Guide
A practical walkthrough of Nepal's main official statistical sources — CBS census and survey publications, Ministry of Finance fiscal data, boundary files — plus how to verify you have the latest release and cite it so the numbers stay checkable. Updated to reflect NLSS IV (fielded 2022/23) as the current living standards round.
Anyone researching Nepal — whether for market sizing, academic work, or policy analysis — runs into the same problem: the numbers exist, but they are scattered across multiple publications, each with its own release schedule and licensing rules. This guide covers the main official sources, how to check that you are looking at the latest version, and how to cite them so your work holds up.
The primary publisher
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) is Nepal's principal statistical agency and works under the National Planning Commission. Its site, cbs.gov.np, is the starting point for almost everything listed below. Open it on the day you write. Publication dates, file formats and section names do change, and older PDFs often get moved rather than updated.
Core publications and where to find them
| Publication | Typical frequency | Publisher | Where to access | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population and Housing Census | Every 10 years (latest 2021) | CBS | CBS website → Census section | District and local-level tables are released in phases; download Excel/CSV. Record the reference period (census day) and the publication year for each table you use. |
| Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS) | Irregular (rounds in 1995/96, 2003/04, 2010/11 and 2022/23) | CBS | CBS website → Surveys | The main source for household income, consumption and poverty. NLSS IV was fielded in 2022/23 — check the CBS site for its report, statistical tables and microdata before citing. Always record the fieldwork period and the year the report was published. |
| Statistical Pocketbook | Annual | CBS | CBS website → Publications | Compact reference for key indicators. Confirm the publication year on the cover or in the PDF metadata. |
| Statistical Yearbook | Annual | CBS | CBS website → Publications | More detailed than the Pocketbook. Same verification step: publication year and reference period for each table. |
| Economic Survey | Annual (fiscal year) | Ministry of Finance | MoF website (mof.gov.np) → Publications | Macro-fiscal data and sectoral performance, released around the budget. Not a CBS product, but essential context for anything economic. |
| Labour Force Survey | Periodic | CBS | CBS website → Surveys | Employment, unemployment and underemployment. Note the survey reference period, which is rarely the same as the publication year. |
| Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) | Periodic, UNICEF-supported | CBS / UNICEF | CBS website → Surveys | Health, education and child protection indicators. Joint publication — cite both agencies and name the round. |
One series worth special care: living standards
For years the 2010/11 NLSS was the most recent round, and a lot of secondary writing still quotes it as though nothing had happened since. That is no longer the state of play. NLSS IV, fielded in 2022/23, is the newer round, and it is the one to reach for if you are describing household income, consumption or poverty in Nepal today.
Two habits will keep you out of trouble here. First, name the round your figure comes from, every time — “NLSS IV, fielded 2022/23” tells the reader far more than “recent survey data”. Second, when you compare rounds, say so explicitly. The gaps between them are long and uneven, which shapes what a trend actually means.
Boundary files for mapping
If you need to map district, municipality or ward-level data, you will want the official boundary shapefiles or GeoJSON files. CBS publishes these alongside census releases; look for a boundary files or GIS data section on the site. Record the version number and release date, because administrative boundaries change whenever local units are created, merged or renamed.
Retail and business data: no official census, only proxies
Nepal does not publish an official retail census. Any “retail density” figure you come across is a proxy. The usual ones:
- Business registration data from the Office of the Company Registrar (OCR), which covers formal companies and misses informal shops.
- Municipal business licence registers, patchy in coverage and not aggregated centrally.
- OpenStreetMap extracts, where coverage varies enormously by district because it depends on volunteer mappers.
If you use a proxy, state the publisher, the extract date and the terms you obtained it under (OpenStreetMap, for instance, is ODbL). Then add a sentence in the same paragraph making clear it is a proxy, not a count.
How to cite a statistic so it stays verifiable
Every number you carry into a report should bring four pieces of metadata with it, in the sentence that introduces it:
- Publisher (e.g., Central Bureau of Statistics)
- Publication title and year (e.g., Statistical Yearbook 2024)
- Reference period (e.g., fiscal year 2080/81, or census day 25 November 2021)
- Access date (the day you opened the file or page)
Example: “Kathmandu district had a population of 2,041,587 on census day, 25 November 2021 (Central Bureau of Statistics, National Population and Housing Census 2021, accessed 23 October 2026).”
Quick verification checklist before you publish
- Opened the CBS (or MoF) site today and located the exact table or PDF you are citing.
- Recorded the publication year printed on the document, not the year you downloaded it.
- Noted the reference period: census date, survey fieldwork months, fiscal year.
- Checked the licence or terms of use. Some PDFs allow redistribution, others require permission.
- Dated anything old inside the sentence itself — “the 2010/11 NLSS found …” rather than “poverty currently stands at …” — and then confirmed whether a later round exists. For living standards, that means NLSS IV (fielded 2022/23).
- Checked that any abbreviation you have introduced (NLSS, MICS, CBS) matches the name printed on the cover of the source.
Where to go next on this site
If you are working with Nepali data, our guides to the country's demographic trends, provincial economic profiles and the art of reading Nepali fiscal year dates (2080/81 is not 1980/81) will save you a round of confused arithmetic.
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