Business Registration Number (BRN)

1. Introduction
1.1 Business Register essentially means the list of all establishments pursuing various economic activities relating to production and or distribution of goods and or services at a place. Such a list when complete will provide an ideal frame for conducting sample surveys and undertaking studies of various economic activities for finding their pattern and trend in the country.
1.2 At present an up-to-date frame of enterprises at the national level is available only in respect of the units/factories covered under the Annual survey of Industries (ASI). The ASI presently covers the relatively bigger units belonging to manufacturing and repair sub-sectors that are registered under sections 2m(i) and 2m(ii) of the Factories Act 1948 or under the Bidi & Cigar Workers (Condition of Employment) Act. For the other sectors, no such updated and satisfactory frame of bigger units/enterprises exists at present. For planning any survey of such units, like the Survey of Non-Manufacturing Industries (SNMI), it would be desirable to develop a frame of establishments along with certain basic items of information for all sub-sectors such as trade, hotels and restaurants, transport, storage, communication, real estate, legal & business services etc. popularly known as Business Register.
1.3 The Business Register so developed would reduce burden on and in turn induce administration to provide proper information on items not yet collected under various registers, reduce survey cost, and also provide useful information for statistical at the lowest level of administration, which is needed for inclusive development of the country.
2. Definitions of Business and Business Register
Business may be defined as an enterprising entity of a person, partnership or corporation/ organization etc., engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or service whereas, Business Register (BR) is a list of establishments and enterprises. It serves as a statistical tool for the preparation and coordination of surveys. It is an important source of information for the statistical analysis of the business population and its demography.
3. Scope and Coverage
In theory, Business Register records all enterprise groups, enterprises and local units that are active in the national economy. Thus it is the basic foundation for System of National Accounts (SNA) Geographically it covers all the State and Union Territories of the country within the domain of Economic Census. It follows by and large the concepts and definitions of Economic Census.