It is important that the base year of critical data series like the GDP, different price indices (WPI and CPI) and the IIP are updated to the most recent feasible year at the earliest, the economic survey said.
An extensive exercise for base revision of important economic statistics is being taken up at the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). “The exercise to change the base year of CPI from 2012 to 2024 has been initiated,” noted the survey.
FE had reported on May 21, citing sources, that the government intends to update the base year of CPI to 2024. As per sources, the new CPI series is likely to have more than 320 items, as against 299 at present, and the weight of items will be decided as per the results of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022-23.
Moreover, the ongoing efforts to construct the producer price index (PPI) for goods and services may be expedited to have a greater grasp of episodes of cost-push inflation. Sources have indicated that PPI is in the final stages of development, and will be launched soon to measure prices at the wholesale level. The government plans to gradually shift to PPI from WPI, hence initially data from both the indices will be released by the government.
The economic survey also suggested the introduction of state-level variants of indices like IIP to help understand the emerging geographical patterns; and survey data to understand private sector capital formation at regular intervals.
It said granular GST data should be made available, as it has “great potential” to analyse the health of businesses, screening of loan applications, provide support for cash flow-based lending, and understand the economies of different geographies deeply. As of now, more than 13 million entities are registered under GST and file returns.
The survey notes that given India’s 2047 goals, it is important for development policy that MoSPI is “capacitated fully” to produce and integrate all required statistics with the desired quality, regularity and timeliness, and the quality and timeliness of administrative and transactional data of the line ministries are brought to levels that fully facilitate timely course corrections.
The survey moots for regular indicators of the dynamics of production and employment in MSMEs, citing them as essential, considering their potential for growth and job creation.
Also, information may be published on industry-wise gross disbursement of bank credit (as opposed to the data on outstanding credit currently available); and a regular mechanism should be established to aggregate the financial flows to infrastructure and physical progress -sectorally and geographically in different infrastructure sectors, at least on an annual basis.
The Labour Bureau is tasked with conducting five surveys relating to workers and employment. “Ensuring rigour, timeliness and user-friendliness of data and making it available in database formats will help analysis and policy,” the survey noted.