Note ban impact overstated by pre-conceived notions, says India's chief statistician

Chief Statistician T C A Anant today said the impact assessment of notes ban on GDP growth by a section of analysts, who have pre-conceived notions about reality, is over stated and fallacious.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the national accounts data yesterday for last fiscal which showed that the fourth quarter Gross Value Added (GVA) growth fell sharply to 5.6 per cent as against 8.7 per cent a year ago.

Several economist and analysts have attributed the decline in the economic growth mainly to demonetisation of 87 currency in November last year.

They are overstating the impact which demonetisation has had on economy because you need to first pull the long run trends out, and not merely on quarter-on-quarter data, Anant said in an interview to PTI.

"How much of an overstatement (it is), I will not say. My only point is that don't make simplistic (statements that) last year it was so much or in October it was so much and now it is so much therefore demonetisation has led to this drop. That is fallacious statement," he said.

On query over the allegations of data fudging, Anant said that the method of capturing data is well described.

He said it is not always a good idea to blame the data but one should try to look at the story which data is telling.

"Unfortunately many analysts have pre-conceived notions of what reality is and would rather stay with those pre- conceived notions rather than working with data.

"Those of us who come from statistical background simply say we will report what the data reveals. We don't have a notion of what reality is other than what the data tells us," he added.

As per the data the drop in GVA in fourth quarter of 2016-17 is not one of event. It has been falling since April- June quarter of 2016-17.