Eco Survey may have a new chapter on services

The Economic Survey 2010-11, to be tabled in Parliament tomorrow, is likely to have a new chapter on the services sector. The comprehensive document that will provide an update on the state of the economy just two days before the General Budget is released is expected to be a little more informative and analytical this time, compared to previous years’ surveys.

To make the survey more useful, Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu, the man who prepares this report card on the economy, will take a step forward to provide ‘little more’ to the readers. Apart from the usual chapters giving the prescription for balancing growth and inflation, officials said chapter on services would discuss how the sector performed.

While some changes in the design and format of the survey are not ruled out, a government official said surprises would be more in the content. The official, however, maintained the changes would not be radical and continuity of the annual document would be maintained.

For Basu, this will be his second Economic Survey after he joined the finance ministry in December 2009. The former Cornell University professor was new to the finance ministry when he worked on last year’s survey, but he still tried to give a fresh perspective to it by adding a chapter on ‘Micro-Foundations of Inclusive Growth’. The chapter dealt with issues that were close to Basu’s heart — development and distribution, poverty, food coupons and their linkage to the unique identification number project.

Basu also tried to do things differently in the Mid-Year Review, which was introduced in December 2010. Normally, a large part of the Mid-Year Review deals with comments and facts on the state of the economy. Basu decided to take it a little further analytically and renamed it ‘Mid-Year Analysis’. The Analysis floated many ideas for discussions such as issues involved in microfinance, capital flows. So far, the economic surveys have mainly seen change in figures, while the content changed little. In most cases, the language remained the same for many years. It remains to be seen whether this survey becomes a trend-setter in doing something new every year.

As regards the chapter on services, it may take forward the working paper on policy for the sector, brought out by the economic division of the Department of Economic Affairs in March 2010. The paper dealt with policy issues in areas like foreign direct investment, disinvestment, tariff and tax, credit and finance, domestic regulation and market access.