GDP Data Based On New Broad-Based Proxies, India Moving Towards Data-Based Governance: CEA Subramanian

Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian on Wednesday (24 April) said that India was moving towards data-based governance and that new proxies were being developed to analyse job creation, reports The Hindu BusinessLine.

“When the economy is changing rapidly, we cannot evaluate it with the same benchmarks. It requires to be calibrated to the new proxies. To ascribe bias or motive is unfortunate,” Subramanian said in an interview.

“Both the job creation and GDP numbers are now being analysed based on the new proxies; therefore, the numbers are not comparable.”

Commenting on the new GDP numbers, Subramanian said that they were based on new proxies. For example, while the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was previously based on factory output, now it is broad-based with inputs provided by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).

"If someone were to argue that the numbers were boosted, then why was the growth higher two quarters ago and slightly lower now. This could have been boosted up as well,” he argued.

Regular And More Frequent Surveys

To better understand the extent and quality of job creation in the country, the government also launched the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in 2017. It was based on recommendations of a task force which performs quarterly surveys in urban areas and annual surveys in rural and urban areas.

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