India seeks help from IMF and World Bank to fill data gaps

The Government of India has approached multilateral organizations such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to find out methods that will help in preparing economic indicators such as retail inflation, industrial production and economic growth.

Highlights

In today’s world Data Inadequacy has become a global phenomenon. Hence, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation is making steps to collaborate with global institutions to address the problem. The inadequate and deficient data might affect the reliability and accuracy of the indicators.

What is the issue?

The National Statistical Office that is the nodal agency in data collection in the country is facing serious challenges to do its work amidst COVID-19 crisis. The most challenging is the CPI (Consumer Price Index). This is mainly because more than 50% of the CPI is from food items.

The CPI data for the month of March according to GOI is much lower than actual. The officials were not able to get prices of more than 25% of items.

Another major issue is that if companies are not bringing out their P&L (Profit and Loss) data by June, this would affect GDP calculation very badly. This would in turn affect policy measures terribly.

Current Scenario

The NSO is collecting data through phones where shops are open. The officials associated with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation are giving data based on their personal shopping.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2020