Government panel suggests common database for economic indicators

A panel of experts has suggested one single database for inflation, industrial output and employment to give credibility to India’s growth numbers and improve the consistency of key statistics.

A committee on analytics under IIT, Mumbai professor NL Sarda has told the government to set up a National Integrated Data System (NIDS), citing lack of metadata or additional contextual information as a major deficiency for all indicators.

The proposed NIDS will create an integrated database system linking separate datasets with a common standard so that data can be easily correlated and a standard protocol for data exchange and data access be created.


The system is expected to overcome the shortcomings of the current compilation method wherein the establishment-based data of Annual Survey of Industries and enterprise-level data of MCA21 are not integrated.

This is intended to give deeper insight into the functioning of corporate sector with respect to national income accounting.

“NIDS is being considered as an integrating framework that would enable users of official statistics to have a single view of data available in the official statistical system irrespective of the fact that underlying databases are distributed and managed by different central and state departments,” the committee said in its report.

It said that this should be the long term goal of the Indian Official Statistical System.

“Each data is needed to calculate national income and gross domestic product. This system will check for coherence and transparency of data and if the data is aligned with each other,” said an official aware of the details.

ET had reported in October 2016 that the government has set up five committees to overhaul the country’s statistical system and restore the credibility of growth numbers.

“We should be in a position to see data on single window and though the existing agencies will keep producing their respective data, it should look to the user that the data has come from the same source,” the official said.

The current practice of data analysis entails collecting data from different sources and analysing it on a spreadsheet.