Sri Lanka has nine provinces which are further subdivided into 25 districts. Of these 25 districts, some areas are considered urban, which are either administered by municipality center/urban center (MC/UC - 16 MCs and 30 UCs). The rural areas are administered by district secretary local government.
The urban manufacturing part of Sri Lanka ICS 2004 covered the following sectors: Food and Beverage (ISIC 311, 312, 313), Textile (321), Garments (322), Industrial Equipment (382), and Rubber Products (355).
The sampling frame was comprised of the following sources:
- List of manufacturing establishments for the Western Province (3 districts) developed in cooperation with United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). A draft list was consolidated from the registers of the Board of Investment, Ministry of Industries, Ministry of Textile and MEIPIP and was further improved by ground checks. DCS is confident that they have captured all the establishments with five or more employees in the Western Province.
- List of manufacturing establishments with 25 or more employees that were used as the sampling frame for the Annual Survey of Manufacturing Industries. This list originated from the 1983 Census of Establishments. The 1993 Census of Establishments Establishments was not conducted because of the political situation in the country and was updated annually from the registers mentioned above.
- List of manufacturing establishments with less than 25 employees that were sampled for the Annual Survey of Industries.
Establishments that had 500 or more employees were selected with certainty, while others were selected by using the stratified simple random sample design. In general, the strata were defined by the sector "X" provincial groups. In cases where the stratum sizes in specific sectors were very sparse, sectors were collapsed. Hence, the final stratification was determined by iteratively collapsing small strata until a sufficient strata size was obtained to ensure a 100% replacement in all strata and adequate strata sample sizes.
