India’s data methods inferior, this mindset needs to change: CEA

New Delhi: Allestimate methodologies have some limitations, but the mindset that India’s methods for estimating GDP are inferior needs to change, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said on Tuesday.

Against the backdrop of persisting concerns in certain quarters about the country’s economic growth figures, Nageswaran highlighted that concerns are raised only when GDP numbers surprise on the upside, while there are no questions about the methodology when the data disappoints.

“It is not as if the Indian GDP numbers are overstating the GDP case but unfortunately, all these... under-informed or half-baked questions are left deliberately hanging so as to sow the seeds of doubt in people, and it does not necessarily serve any purpose because they are not rigorous,” the CEA said.

He was addressing various stakeholders at the pre-release consultative workshop on base revision of CPI, GDP and IIP organised by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in the national capital.

“In general, we are engaged in an exercise of estimation, and all estimation methodologies will have limitations, but we seem to be particularly fond of questioning our methods, and less so of others, somehow thinking that our methods are inferior to others.