MOSPI constitutes committee on economic statistics headed by Pronab Sen

NEW DELHI: A high-level panel under India’s first chief statistician Pronab Sen will review and develop the country’s surveys on employment, industry and services sector amid criticism of official statistics.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has set up a single standing committee on economic statistics (SCES) to deliberate and develop methodologies for surveys on industry, services and employment in place of multiple panels on these issues.

Comprising 27 members, including academics and industry representatives, the SCES will subsume in it the four standing committees on labour force statistics, industrial statistics, services sector and unincorporated sector enterprises.

It will review the existing framework of data sources, indicators and definitions of index of industrial production, periodic labour force survey, time use survey, economic census and unorganised sector statistics, among others. “The idea is to make these statistics talk to each other and make them consistent,” said Sen.

The committee has been set up at a time when the credibility and independence of India’s official statistics have been doubted on various grounds, including the gross domestic product (GDP) growth numbers and methodology, employment and expenditure surveys.

“This is a consolidated committee dealing with issues which are interlinked. It will look at producing sectors,” said an official aware of the details.