The Government of India has constituted a high powered committee on ?Estimation of Savings and Investments? under the chairmanship of C Rangarajan, chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.
The committee is expected to submit its report to the government within six months from December 26, 2007, the Reserve Bank of India said on Monday.
In the light of the higher growth path of the economy, the committee would undertake a critical review of the available estimates of domestic and national savings and investment in the economy, both in the aggregate and its components with respect to data base, methods of estimation, reliability and interpretational significance, said RBI . The committee would consider if rapid financial deepening in the economy is getting duly reflected in the estimates of financial savings and suggest improvements, if needed; The committee would look into the feasibility of directly estimating household savings through integrated income and expenditure surveys.
The panel will examine the feasibility of arriving at separate estimates for pure households, household enterprises and unincorporated bodies through a suitable method; The committee would also examine savings in the farm sector in relation to investments; The other areas the panel would examine are whether esimation of corporate savings should be on a marked to market basis or the present book value method; to suggest improvements in the methods and procedures used in the estimation of corporate investment and savings; to recommend methods of strengthening public sector savings and investment estimates by taking account of municipalities, city corporations, gram panchayats and other local governments on the one hand and increased private participation in public investment on the other.
Apart from these, the panel would also examine the empirical methods and procedures used in the estimates based on commodity-flow-method and flow-of-funds method and suggest improvements therein and suggest new data bases for improving the reliability or checking validity of the estimates and review the existing methodologies and suggest improvements in the estimation of capital formation at the regional level. The other members of the committee are: Kirit Parikh, member-in-charge of perspective planning Division, Planning Commission, Ravindra Dholakia of IIM, Ahmedabad, S L Shetty, EPW Research Foundation, Mumbai, Saumitra Chaudhuri, Member of the Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister, Ramesh Kolli, Additional Director General, National Accounts Division, CSO, R B Barman, executive director, Reserve Bank of India will be the member secretary of the committee.
