SME Times News Bureau | 05 Nov, 2019
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
(MOSPI) will, in next few months, decide on a new base year for calculating the
GDP and is working to bring in a new series for national accounts in place of
the existing base year of 2011-12, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Though the year 2017-18 is under consideration as the new
base year, no final decision has been taken as the committees of experts are
awaiting some more data before finalising their opinion, MOSPI Secretary Pravin
Srivastava said at an industry chamber Ficci-organised conference here.
"The decision to change the base year (of GDP) would
be taken in the next few months. We are waiting for Annual Survey of Industries
and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. All the preparatory work is getting ready
for that. Once the result is out, we will place it before the respective
committees (to decide about the base year," Srivastava said.
In January last year, the Statistics Ministry had said
that it is set to change the base year of national accounts to 2017-18 from
2011-12 after completion of the household consumer expenditure survey and
labour force data by the end of 2018.
"My ministry has planned to revise the base year of
National Accounts Statistics to 2017-18. The preparatory work for this huge
exercise has been started," the then Statistics Minister D.V. Sadananda
Gowda had said while addressing a press conference on the government's performance
over a three-year period.
Former Chief Statistician T.C.A Anant had said:
"Once the results of employment survey and household consumer expenditure
survey come out then base year can be changed. Those are critical inputs into
the base revision."