Gross domestic product data all set to be updated by 2015

NEW DELHI: Come 2015 economy watchers and experts will have more updated GDP data to analyse the Indian economy that is showing signs of reversing two years of slump. The statistics office said on Monday that the base year of GDP will be revised to 2011-12 and the new data will be available from 2015.

The overhaul of the GDP is expected to expand the size of the Indian economy, due to broadening of coverage of unorganised sectors, agriculture and corporate sector.

"In accordance with the recommendation of the National Statistical Commission to revise the base year of all economic indices every five years, it is proposed to revise the base year of national accounts from 2004-05 to 2011-12 in 2015," ministry of statistics and programme implementation said in a statement on Friday.

The new series will provide more updated information about the Indian economy that has seen a remarkable growth surge from 2004-05 up to global financial crisis in 2008 and deep slowdown in the last couple of months. "The new series of national accounts is tentatively scheduled for release on January 31, 2015," the statement said.

According to experts, widening of national accounts coverage in different sectors will likely push up India’s absolute GDP numbers substantially from the Rs. 113 lakh crore in 2013-14.

India is currently the10th largest economy in the world in nominal GDP terms. The changes are based on the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics (ACNAS) headed by Prof K Sundaram.

The new series will incorporation corporate information from the MCA21 database of the ministry of corporate affairs instead of the results obtained from the RBI study on Company Finances, which would mean a more comprehensive inclusion of corporate data in GDP numbers.

CSO will directly source corporate data from the ministry of corporate affairs database of more than 3.5 lakh companies to estimate GDP.

The statistics department currently relies on financials of about 2,500 firms compiled by the Reserve Bank of India to get an estimate for the entire industry. "Use of MCA database will considerably change the manner in which we estimate corporate sector data," said a Mospi official.

It will also help improve accuracy, particularly for the services sector, which accounts for about 60 per cent of GDP. The revision has got delayed as the earlier exercise with base year 2009-10 had to be aborted as that year there was a severe drought. Base year is carefully selected because of the impact it has on the numbers and is usually choses as one in which no serious anomaly was present.

The new series of Index of industrial production and wholesale price index will be released by March 2016, with revised base of 2011-12.