Arvind Subramanian defends his GDP overestimation argument

Defending his argument that India's GDP growth overestimated by 2.5%, former Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian said that he had used a specific framework to validate GDP from demand side. He also said that tools like GDP deflator could have been underestimated.

Lending more credence to his GDP argument, he said that no country has grown over 7 per cent with exports below 5 per cent.

India's sustained high GDP growth post 2011, despite macro shocks unlike large emerging markets an indicator, said former CEA.



In his latest research paper, the former chief economic advisor said India’s GDP growth between 2011-12 and 2016-17 was probably bumped up by about 2.5 per cent.

Days after Arvind Subramanian's argument, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) came out with an eight-point rebuttal to the former chief economic advisor claims on growth estimates.

The PMEAC rebuttal read "given the fact that his paper lacks rigour in terms of specific data sources and description, alternative hypothesis, rationale of equation specifications, use of dummies, and robustness-check diagnostics of estimated equations, and choice of countries in the sample and a specific list, it would not stand the scrutiny of academic or policy research standards."