KEY POINTS

·        The new series of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures with 2011-12 as base, released in 2015, has not gone well with analysts; the withholding of employment-unemployment data for some time and consumer expenditure data, which is not released, added to this unease

·        The System of National Accounting (SNA) is designed to measure production, consumption, and accumulation of income and wealth for assessing the performance of the economy.

·        The present series encountered serious problems for price adjustment, specifically for the services sector contributing about 60% of GDP, in the absence of appropriate price indices for most service sectors.

·        The use of MCA21 data and blow up factors thereof without weeding out defunct enterprises, and then insufficient work on mapping of comparable ASI data, followed by similar survey on services sector enterprises were another major lacunae.

Unchanged approach

·        The approach for collection of data remains largely the same for long: The initiative under e-governance enabled the capturing of huge data, which need to be collated for their meaningful use for production of official statistics. The process for collection and collation of data needs modernisation using technology.

For better statistics

·        We need to re-engineer the existing system, creating an integrated system populated with granular data. The country is vast, heterogeneous. There are non-linearities and path dependence, which should be considered while setting goals for development, reducing regional imbalance.

·        The economics now is deeply rooted in data, measuring and impacting competitiveness, risks, opportunities and social welfare in an integrated manner, going much beyond macroeconomics.

·        As these statistics reflect on the performance of the government, it is necessary that its independence is maintained scrupulously.

Kindly review