New Delhi: The government is working to improve India's statistical system, which will enable official data to be more comprehensive and credible in accurately reflecting various economic trends, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Mint in a post-budget conversation.
“Data is something the government is working on. We need much more comprehensive and credible data, and data that captures these kinds of changes (economic trends),” Sitharaman said, adding that the need for credible and comprehensive data can hardly be overestimated.
“One improvement (is) in the labor force surveys, which come from the labor department. I think it's a vastly improved version that gives you a pretty good picture of the job market,” she added.
However, the Finance Minister stressed that while the formal labor sector has been successfully mapped, the informal economy cannot yet be captured in official data.
“But then again, that's just [for] Employment in the formal sector as we have not captured the informal sector yet,” Sitharaman said.
Mint had said on January 23, citing sources, that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had initiated a major take stock of India's statistical system in the wake of several controversies over official surveys and estimates.
Some of these controversies and concerns regarding official data concern the reliability of growth estimates, delays in conducting certain economic surveys and the census, the comprehensiveness of sampling methods, and the gap in the number of deaths from Covid-19 estimated by India and the United States. World Health Organization (WHO).
Officials from the ministries of statistics and finance, led by PMO officials, are part of the stocktake of the Indian statistical system. Although some discussions on this topic have already taken place in recent months, the next meeting is planned soon.
The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM), in a document titled 'The State of India's Statistical System', has drawn the attention of policymakers to the need for reforms in the Indian statistical system as the government seeks to improve domestic and international trust in official data.
The document's suggestions included revisions to shorten the time lag for releasing final gross domestic product (GDP) figures for a given year, which currently takes as many as three years, and multiple updates, and the need to use GDP deflators when publishing gross domestic product (GDP) figures. calculating real GDP more extensively.
The GDP deflator, a measure of inflation in the economy, is used to calculate inflation-adjusted GDP.
Key government officials will examine concerns around the reliability of data, the independence of the statistical system and the autonomy of statistical institutions in the approval and publication of data, as the EAC-PM document had drawn the attention of policy makers on these issues, with the attention was drawn to public opinion. debate around them.
While robust statistics are critical for measuring the effectiveness of the country's policies and progress, taking stock to improve the country's statistical systems will also increase confidence in India's statistical system.
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Published: Feb 5, 2024 09:15 IST