Base year depends on global, national economic situation, data availability: Rao Inderjit Singh

New Delhi: The government on Thursday informed Parliament that the choice of an appropriate base year for national accounts depends on several factors like the global and national economic situation as also the data availability which in some cases is through quinquennial surveys.
As per the United Nations System of National Accounts (UN SNA)-2008, base year of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) series is revised from time to time to better capture structural changes in the economy. The member countries are required to revise the base year of their macro-economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross Value Added, Index of Industrial Production, and Consumer Price Index periodically, to better capture the structural changes in the economy.

“In India, the base year of the GDP series has been revised seven times, the last two revisions being in 2004-05 and 2011-12,” Rao Inderjit Singh, minister of state (independent charge) for the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI), said in a written reply to a question in
Rajya Sabha.

He said the Private Final Consumption Expenditure during the last three years is showing increasing trend.

In a separate reply, he said the exercise of base year revision of National Accounts is guided by the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics (ACNAS) which
had earlier recommended to revise the present base year of National Accounts from 2011-12 to 2017-18 in view of the likely availability of requisite data. The issue of the base year revision was again discussed by ACNAS in its recent meeting held on October 30 and after considering different choices it was recommended to the ministry, to consider 2020-21 as the next base year in view of the structural reforms in the economy and likely availability of data through various annual surveys like Consumer Expenditure, Annual Survey on Unincorporated Sector Enterprises and Annual Survey of Service Sector Enterprise, among others.

Consumer expenditure survey
Singh also told the Upper House that as per the ministry’s Annual Report 2018-19, the key indicator report and data of NSS 75th round (July, 2017-June, 2018) including that of the Consumer Expenditure Survey was expected to be released in June 2019.

“The results of this survey were examined and it was observed that there was a significant variation in the levels in the consumption pattern as well as in the direction of the change while comparing with other administrative data sources,” he said.

The matter was referred to a Committee of Experts which has recommended refining the survey methodology and improving the data quality aspects on a concurrent basis. The ministry, he said, has decided not to release the Consumer Expenditure Survey results of 2017-2018.