Informist, Wednesday, Sep 25, 2024

NEW DELHI – The government is looking to introduce the new series for GDP, with 2022-23 (Apr-Mar) as the base year, by February 2026, statistics ministry officials said at a conference with economists and forecasters on Tuesday in Mumbai. The statistics ministry has set Feb 27, 2026 as the date for introduction of the new GDP series, economists who attended the conference told Informist.

Work for revision in the base year of key macroeconomic indicators such as GDP and CPI is already in progress. The government has already formed the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics, which will decide on the base year revision of GDP. It has also reconstituted the Technical Advisory Committee on Statistics of Prices and Cost of Living to advise on the construction of consumer, wholesale, retail, and producers' price indices.

The ministry, however, has not fixed a date for introduction of the new CPI series, economists said. The current base year for GDP is 2011-12, while that for CPI is 2012.

Informist had reported in May that the government aimed to bring in a new series for GDP, Index of Industrial Production, and Wholesale Price Index with 2022-23 as the base year, by 2026.

While the government intends to keep a similar base year for these macroeconomic indicators, the decision will be taken by the expert committee, a senior statistics ministry official had told Informist before Tuesday's conference. "Ideally, we would like to have a common base year, but we are not ideologically stuck on that issue," the official had said.

At the conference, economists also made several suggestions to the statistics ministry. These included the exclusion of employer-provided dwellings from the CPI and a revision in the methodology used to compile the housing index.

Informist had exclusively reported on Tuesday, quoting sources, that the statistics ministry had already decided to exclude government housing from the CPI.

Some other recommendations from economists included frequent Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys to ensure regular revision of the CPI and other macroeconomic indicators, the ministry said in a press release. The government has held back-to-back Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys in 2022-23 (Aug-Jul) and 2023-24 to test the robustness of a new methodology.

On Monday, Informist had reported that the statistics ministry is looking at ways to improve its ability to conduct more surveys, with greater use of technology and new sources of data at the top of its list. This, a senior government official told Informist, could make it easier to conduct crucial exercises such as the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey more frequently.

Economists also suggested adequate emphasis on spatial dimensions of GDP, such as urban, rural, district domestic product, among others. They also said that the discrepancy in estimation of GDP from income and expenditure approaches should be reduced, and asked for the time lag in the release of GDP data to be brought down.

Economists called for better coverage of services in the revised CPI inflation series, and also that the ministry compile core inflation which would help provide a "uniform understanding of core inflation". End

Reported by Shubham Rana and Siddharth Upasani

Edited by Avishek Dutta

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