Government to Revise GDP Base Year, Measure Women's Economic Contribution

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Union Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation DV Sadananda Gowda said that his ministry intends to undertake several initiatives during financial year 2018-19 "to further improve statistical system to meet the data requirements in the emerging socio-economic scenario of the country".

New Delhi: The government is set to revise the base years of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) in order to "accommodate and factor" the economic changes in the country, it said on Thursday.

Addressing the media, Union Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation DV Sadananda Gowda said that his ministry intends to undertake several initiatives during financial year 2018-19 "to further improve statistical system to meet the data requirements in the emerging socio-economic scenario of the country".

He said the ministry was "proposing to initiate steps to revise the base years of GDP, IIP and CPI". The new base year for GDP and IIP will be 2017-18 and for CPI, it will be 2018.

At present, 2011-12 is used as the base year for calculating the GDP.

Gowda said the ministry would also launch new surveys to address the data gap and to ensure regular flow of data for the services and informal sector.

"The ministry also proposes to launch a Time Use Survey, which inter-alia aims at assessing the contribution of women in non-marketed social and economic activities, which have not been measured so far," he said.

The ministry brings out estimates of macro-economic aggregates, estimates on various socio-economic parameters and on short-term indicators from time to time, as per pre-determined calendar of releases for "facilitating better understanding and assessment of the progress of the economy and the society for promoting evidence-based policy formulation".

The ministry has launched a Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in April 2017 to assess the labour force scenario in the country. The results of this survey (rural and urban) would be made available to the government and non-government stakeholders in 2018-19, he said.

"The ministry is at an advanced stage of establishing a National Data Warehouse on official statistics. The data warehouse will act as repository of all official statistics," the minister said.

Gowda said that the ministry was also inclined to prepare during 2018-19 a national report on baseline data to monitor the status of progress for goals and targets under the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).