The paper "What is to be expected from an operative approach to the Informal Sector" presented by Mr. Rodrigo Negrete (Mexico) attempted to unveil the issues associated with defining "informal" both at operative and conceptual levels. He emphasised that a tactical approach to identify the informal sector by means of a survey must guarantee exhaustiveness in relation to the universe that is being sought to be estimated. At the same time, this approach by no means can ever be taken for identification of the said universe. During the course of discussions, it tried to bring out a clear distinction between the meaning of a definition and a description to the informal sector. It justified that the definition is an inescapable condition, whereas a description on the other hand covers only the elements correlated to the phenomenon of informal sector to a reasonable degree. From the operative perspective, the paper details a scheme in which for each criterion of exhaustiveness, key concepts, and for analytical purposes, the topics and aspects that are to be looked forward, in an inquiry directed towards the informal sector. In the end, the paper also attempted to exemplify the issues, to the extent possible, by taking an example obtained from the Micro-business Survey in Mexico in 1996. It emphasised the need to engage in finding a proposition in order to start working with it as a common language to be used in international forums.