Government changing base year for GDP, Rao Inderjit Singh tells Parliament

NEW DELHI: The Centre has decided to update the base year for calculating India’s gross domestic product or GDP, the widest measure of national income, minister of state (independent charge) statistics and programme implementation Rao Inderjit Singh told Lok Sabha in a written reply on Monday.
The base year is being updated from 2011-12 to 2022-23 and an advisory committee on national accounts statistics (ACNAS) with representatives from the Centre and states, Reserve Bank India, and academic experts has been constituted, the minister said in his reply.
Since economic indicators and prices keep changing, economists fix a base year to track changes in growth, in which all values are held constant. The base year is a reference year against which all other values are compared and is a critical part of the methodology for estimating economic growth.
India’s GDP growth slowed sharply to a seven-quarter low during July-September of 2024-25, data released by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) last month showed.
The economy expanded 5.4% in the second quarter from a year ago, hobbled by tepid consumption demand and a weakening in the mining sector, the data showed. GDP grew 6.8% in the financial year’s first quarter.
Towards overhauling the national accounts systems, steps, such as “constitution of ACNAS, standardisation of data structure to promote harmonised quality reporting across National Statistical System and use of administrative data are steps being taken by the government to improve the statistical system”, Singh said.
A 22-member panel set up by the ministry is currently working on arriving at a new base year for various price indices, including the Wholesale Price Index, which tracks producer prices, as well as determining updated weights assigned to commodities covered by them.
The Union government is also planning to conduct the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), which gives official employment and unemployment data, more frequently than it currently does, MoSPI secretary Saurabh Garg, said in August.
“Reform initiatives of the ministry for availability of quality data to meet the dynamically changing data requirements are ongoing. There is a need to revitalise statistical coordination between the Centre and states. There are plans to increase the frequency of surveys like PLFS,” Garg told the 28th Conference of Central and State Statistical Organisations.