Defending the credibility of India’s GDP statistics, Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran has said that the country does not use revisions in methodology or base years to artificially boost economic growth figures.In an interview with news agency ANI, Nageswaran responded to concerns raised by some economists over India’s GDP estimates, saying GDP measurement is an estimate in every country and that India follows internationally accepted statistical practices.“GDP is an estimate. No country can pretend that they have an accurate way of measuring the GDP,” he said.Nageswaran argued that India’s recent GDP rebasing exercise itself demonstrates that the government is not attempting to inflate economic output through statistical revisions.“If they had said Indian GDP was no longer 354 lakh crores but 384 lakh crores, people would have accepted that. That is what many countries do. In fact, we are the only country which brought it down,” he said, referring to the revision following the change in base year and methodology.“So we are not trying to use any of these methodological changes to bump up our numbers,” he added.The CEA said India’s statistical framework is focused on producing reliable data rather than numbers that support any particular narrative.“We produce reliable statistics. We follow internationally accepted methods and we don’t use the GDP methodological revisions to bump up numbers artificially,” he said.“Our philosophy is to let the statistics speak for themselves.”Referring to observations made by international institutions, Nageswaran said questions raised by organisations such as the IMF have largely related to methodology rather than the credibility of India’s data.“IMF, for example, they only questioned us not on the reliability, but on the fact that some of the methodologies need improvement,” he said, adding that such improvements have since been undertaken.Nageswaran also argued that criticism of GDP estimates often stems from expectations about the economy rather than concerns over the quality of the data.“I think the problem with some of these critiques is that if the number doesn’t meet their expectations, then they are willing to call it, ‘I don’t have trust in that number’,” he said, ANI quoted.Recalling the sharp economic contraction during the Covid-19 pandemic, he noted that India’s GDP figures were widely accepted when they reflected a steep decline.“In the first quarter, April to June 2020, Indian GDP went down by 25 per cent year on year. At that time, nobody said this is a much exaggerated fall. I don’t trust the Indian GDP numbers,” he said.“If the statistics doesn’t confirm my belief or wish that the Indian economy is actually in a bad state, then the statistics are unreliable. So I find this inconsistency difficult to accept,” Nageswaran added.
