Government has constituted a committee to upgrade the norms for computation of economic data at states and districts level in backdrop of plans to revise the base year for National Accounts or Gross Domestic Production (GDP) calculation.
Terms of Reference of the Committee
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The committee will review concepts, definitions, classifications, data conventions, data sources and data requirements for preparation of State Domestic Product (SDP) and District Domestic Product (DDP) and to lay down revised guidelines.
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It will also suggest measures for improving SDP and DDP in the country taking into consideration availability of data and requirements of Centre and States/UTs.
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It will also suggest state level annual and benchmark surveys keeping in view needs of System of National Accounts especially in view of next base year revision.
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It will submit its report within one year.
Why needed?
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The Central Statistics Office (CSO), under Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) revises the base year of macroeconomic indicators, as regular exercise, to capture structural changes in economy and improve quality and representativeness of indices.
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CSO had last updated base year for GDP calculation to 2011-12 from January 2015, replacing old series base year of 2004-05.
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MOSPI is planning to change base year to 2017-18 for calculation of GDP and Index Industrial Production (IIP) numbers from current 2011-12 with an aim to capture changes in the economy.
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It was suggested that same principles and concepts should be used while calculating SDP and DDP across the country to make data comparable.