The revamped national income accounts, with 2022-23 as the new base year, have revealed major differences in sectoral performance compared with the earlier 2011-12 series. According to the data provided by the National Statistics Office (NSO), the most striking divergence has occurred in manufacturing, “mining & quarrying,” and “public administration & defence and other services.”
NSO data reveals that the manufacturing sector, which recorded double-digit growth in FY24 and FY26 (Year-on-Year), has seen an upward revision of 480 basis points (bps) in FY25 and 450 bps in FY26 in the new series compared to the old series for the same years.
The manufacturing sector recorded a growth of 4.3% Y-o-Y and 9.3% Y-o-Y in FY25 as per the old and new series respectively. In FY26, the sector’s growth was estimated at 7% Y-o-Y under the old series and 11.5% (Y-o-Y) as per the new series.
Economists attributed this uplift to the incorporation of granular Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings and the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises. Further, the Periodic Labour Force Survey data seems to have captured a far larger slice of formal and semi-formal activity.
Manufacturing Miracle
The government also shifted to using the double deflation and single extrapolation method in the new series instead of the single deflation method in the 2011-12 series.
An SBI Research report stated that the new series effectively formalised the contribution of roughly 25 million manufacturing workers, translating into an additional economic value of around Rs 4.3 lakh crore when benchmarked against typical wage levels.
Mining and quarrying, which showed a torpor in the old series, also recorded large swings in the new one. After a slight downward adjustment in FY24, the sector showed explosive upward revisions in the following years, with growth accelerating sharply to reflect more accurate measurement of physical output. The sector recorded an upward revision of 900 bps in FY25 and 480 bps in FY26 as per the new series.
The mining and quarrying sector recorded a growth of 2.7% (Y-o-Y) and 11.7% in FY25 as per the old and new series respectively. In FY26, the growth rate was estimated at -0.7% (Y-o-Y) as per the old series and 4.1% as per the new series. In FY24, however, the sector recorded a downward revision of 80 bps in the new series. Economists stated that mining gained from the shift to volume-based methods and more disaggregated corporate data, allowing actual production trends to shine through rather than being masked by price assumptions.
Deep Downgrades in Services
In stark contrast, “public administration, defence and other services” suffered the deepest downgrades in new series. Growth in this category was revised downward by 200 basis points in FY24, 380 basis points in FY25, and a substantial 410 basis points in FY26 in the new series, signalling that earlier estimates had significantly overstated activity in government-related services. The sharp downward revision in public administration reflects multiple corrections, including adjustments to pension expenditure estimates, greater use of household and unincorporated sector surveys, and CPI-based single extrapolation that removed earlier upward biases embedded in the old methodology, economists said.
Additionally, the agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing sector also saw a downward revision in year-on-year growth in the new series compared to the old series. The growth in this category was revised downward by 2 bps, 45 bps and 70 bps in the new series for FY24, FY25 and FY26 respectively.