In preparation for the census in Ukraine, it is necessary to take into account possible coincidences with lockdowns due to situation with the spread of coronavirus disease, first deputy head of the Servant of the People Oleksandr Korniyenko said.

"We have been dealing with this issue for a long time with Nemchynov (Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleh Nemchynov) [...] Indeed, we cannot plan anything seriously in the country, develop a strategy when we do not understand what resources we have, and the main resource in the economy is labor, after all. And there are many insinuations because of this: either we have 35 million, or 20, or 10 or 70. We need to figure it out. There is a census mechanism - it is absolutely world-known and accepted," Korniyenko told reporters in hallways of parliament on Thursday.

At the same time, he said that the latest technologies now allow "to make it cheaper in many respects," so preliminary calculations, reaching UAH four billion, will be optimized taking into account that a third of the population is able to fill out a questionnaire online.

According to him, over the next year it will be necessary to conduct training and determine "what we will do digitally and what - physically."

"We also understand that in our conditions it will also be superimposed on the COVID. And if we have a lockdown again in winter and spring, then in fact some mass processes will stop," Korniyenko said.

As previously reported, MP from the European Solidarity faction Oleksiy Honcharenko published a draft decision of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Budget, according to which the first since 2001 All-Ukrainian census can be scheduled for 2023 and it is planned to allocate UAH 82,474,900 for it.

According to the draft decision published by Honcharenko, the funds allocated from the budget will be spent on creating a service to identify respondents using a mobile phone number - to conduct an Internet round of the census, as well as technical training of state statistics.