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Informist, Monday, Nov. 24, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – While overall seasonal patterns remain largely stable, several economic indicators have experienced more pronounced seasonal fluctuations, according to a paper by Reserve Bank of India staff Monday. Economic indicators such as – cash in hand and balances with the RBI, demand deposits, prices of major vegetables, industrial production, passenger vehicle sales, merchandise exports and Real Time Gross Settlement transactions — have shown increased seasonal swings, it said. 

 

"Additionally, some indices and banking and monetary aggregates have seen shifts in their peak and trough months," according to the paper titled 'Seasonality in Key Economic Indicators of India.' The paper, authored by Souvik Ghosh, Shivangee Misra, Anirban Sanyal and Sanjay Singh, does not represent the views of the central bank.

 

Seasonality is a fundamental component of the data generating process, alongside trend, cyclical variation and random fluctuations. Multiple factors, such as weather conditions, production cycles, the nature of economic activity, holidays and vacation periods influence the seasonal pattern of economic indicators. "Banking indicators like bank credit, non-food credit and demand deposits typically reach their year-end peak in March," the paper said. "CPI experiences seasonal pressure from July to November, primarily due to rising vegetable prices during the monsoon, while fruit prices tend to peak in the summer."

 

In industrial production, most items touch their highest levels in March, except consumer durables, which peak in October during the festive season, as per the paper. Further, both exports and imports reach their seasonal highs in March, with exports showing more pronounced seasonal fluctuations than imports, it said. "Services exports peak in Q4, while exports of telecommunications, computer and information services are strongest in Q3," the paper's findings showed.

 

Among the quarterly macro-economic series, real GDP and gross value added consistently peak in the March quarter, with seasonal variations in national account aggregates having risen since the pandemic began in 2020, even after adjusting for pandemic-related volatility, it said. Both GDP and GVA reach their seasonal trough in the September quarter.

 

However, it noted that the COVID-19 pandemic caused huge disruptions in economic activity and seasonal data patterns, resulting in atypical data patterns and difficulty in definitively identifying changes in the underlying data-generating process. "The seasonal factor estimates presented in this article have been derived with appropriate precautions and robustness checks; however, these estimates may further evolve as more post-pandemic data become available," it said. End

 

Reported by Pratiksha

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

 

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