Govt to release census data on religion

Data from Myanmar’s 2014 census on the populations of the country’s religious groups will be released this month, a ministry spokesperson has announced. Myint Kyaing, the permanent secretary within the Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Population, told The Irrawaddy on 12 July that the religious data will be ready for publication in late July, but data on ethnic populations will continue to be withheld. “The figures will reveal the population of each religious group in the country, as well as at the state and divisional level,” he says. Due to ongoing debates, figures on Myanmar’s religious and ethnic makeup were delayed from publication with the other census results in May of 2015, which revealed the total population to be more than 51 million.

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