Govt disagrees with CSO on 5% GDP growth
The Finance ministry and the Central Statistics Office were locked in disagreement Friday with North Block questioning the CSO’s projection that the economy would grow by a mere 5 per cent during 2012-13, the slowest in a decade, saying the final numbers would be higher at 5.5 per cent “or even more”.
But the country’s chief statistician, T C A Anant, whose office compiled the data and released it on Thursday, claimed he was on sure ground.
“Our calculation of the advance estimate (of national income) is based on the methodology prescribed in the National Accounts Estimates,” Anant told The Indian Express. Referring to the Finance ministry’s observation about early signals showing a revival in the economy which the GDP data had apparently failed to reflect, he said, “We can only go by the data available to us. People in charge of different ministries do often get early warning signals but we don’t know about these”.
The advance estimates of national income for 2012-13 released Thursday stumped the stock and currency markets with a sharply lower forecast for GDP growth at 5 per cent. The Finance ministry had estimated the number in a range of 5.7 to 5.9 per cent while the RBI has projected a 5.5 per cent growth rate a few days ago.
The Finance ministry’s chief economic adviser Raghuram Rajan also said at a CitiMIT Sloan symposium that there were some problems in the CSO’s growth estimate. “It is based on past data. At turning points in GDP growth,
