Govt mulls new data series in 3 months

The government is planning to finalise a list of data series that will be called “core statistics”, that is, numbers that have national importance, within the next three months.

The development comes after Parliament gave its approval to the Collection of Statistics Bill, 2008, which gives the government power to classify any statistics as “core statistics” and also determine a method to collect and disseminate these.

“We have written to various government departments asking them what statistics are crucial for them. After receiving the response, we will come out with a list,” said a senior statistics ministry official.

At present, a number of government agencies collect and disseminate data, often leading to non-conformity with the widely-accepted standards.

Once the list of core statistics is released, the official said, the ministry would specify standards for both collection and dissemination.

For example, the data relating to price change (wholesale price index) and industrial output (Index of Industrial Production) would have to disclose the non-response rate, the percentage of data points that are not reported while computing the index.

At present, when the provisional WPI is released, only a fourth of data points are obtained and the rest are extrapolated from the previous week’s response. A user of this data would like to have this information.

India is now a part of International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Special Data Dissemination System (SDDS), which specifies the standards to be followed for different type of data series. The identified core statistics would adopt these standards, said a government official.

For example, IMF’s SDDS requires summary methodology (like concepts, definitions, nature of basic data and compilation practices) for each data series. India has so far produced this under the data category producer prices in the real sector only, according to an analysis done by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The central bank had suggested posting of summary methodologies on all data categories.

Further, with the availability of core statistics, it would become easier for the National Statistical Commission, which is a non-executive advisory body to the government, to get a better understanding of the factors affecting the national economy and to fine-tune data collection.