Economic Forecasts
RBI Gupta says working to improve forecast accuracy, mull monthly BoP data
This story was originally published at 19:09 IST on 26 November 2025
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NEW DELHI – The Reserve Bank of India is committed to improving the accuracy of its forecasts, key for the Monetary Policy Committee's interest rate decisions, Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta said Wednesday. The RBI has been ensuring the use of more recent data and has extended the scope of stakeholder consultations, Gupta said.
The RBI is also looking to release Balance of Payments data on a monthly basis, Gupta said. Currently, the central bank releases the data only on a quarterly basis, though it has reduced the time lag for the release of data to around 60 days from 90 days earlier. As per the latest data released on Sept. 1, India's current account deficit fell to $2.4 billion, or 0.2% of GDP, in the June quarter from $8.6 billion, or 0.9% of GDP, a year ago.
The RBI cut the time lag by "optimising the data reporting timelines and streamlining the internal processes", Gupta said at the statistics ministry's workshop on base revision of CPI, GDP, and Index of Industrial Production in Mumbai. The proposed monthly Balance of Payments statistics will be released with a lag of around 40 days and at a slightly more aggregate level, the deputy governor said. "To achieve this, the data processing timelines of various reporting entities are being expedited and streamlined, and further internal cohesion is being established," she added.
Gupta said that ensuring there is no systematic bias in the forecasts is as important as minimising the forecast errors. The inflation forecasts used in the Monetary Policy Committee resolution are unbiased, Gupta said. Economists and market players have criticised the RBI for its forecasts, which have been far away from the actual data. Recently, the RBI was criticised for overestimating CPI inflation in 2025-26 (Apr-Mar). The central bank has been behind professional forecasters in lowering the CPI inflation forecasts. In October, the RBI lowered the FY26 inflation forecast by 50 basis points to 2.6%, which economists still call an overestimation by another 40-50 bps.
To improve its forecasting, the RBI meets stakeholders from the real sector, financial markets, banks, non-banking financial companies, analysts, and economists before each meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee. "These interactions provide us with valuable insights into their perspectives, outlooks, and forecasts, which inform our assessments," the deputy governor said.
The RBI is also evaluating the methodology of its household surveys on inflation expectations and consumer confidence, which has remained unchanged since 2018, Gupta said. While the scope of these surveys has been expanded to more cities and rural areas over the last two years, the fresh evaluation will address the gap between perceived and realised inflation, improve questionnaire design, and explore the inclusion of household panels, Gupta said.
The central bank is also planning changes to its unified data dissemination platform, the Database on Indian Economy, Gupta said. "Planned enhancements include a redesign of the underlying data architecture, development of Application Programming Interfaces for automatic retrieval, improved search and visualisation tools, and harmonised user experience across the portal, mobile app and future digital channels," she said.
The Database on Indian Economy was launched in 2004 and hosts more than 2,000 statistical tables, which contain over 20,000 individual data series spanning the real sector, financial markets, public finance, the external sector, banking statistics, surveys, and corporate performance. End
Reported by Shubham Rana
Edited by Ashish Shirke
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