Private facelift for govt data

Plan panel aims at making data accessible in analytical format

US financial services major Citigroup and the Indian Planning Commission’s way of functioning may be as different as chalk and cheese, but the two may converge in the way economic data are presented.

The commission has roped in Rohini Malkani, an economist with Citigroup, in an honourary position to formulate a format for the government’s macroeconomic reports. Malkani, who brings out similar reports for Citigroup, is expected to bring a sea-change in the way government organisations publish economic data.

The trigger: Economists and analysts have always taken government data with a pinch of salt due to obvious gaps and time lags.

All that may change, courtesy the initiative by the Planning Commission, which is expecting Malkani to help it work out a standard format for maintaining and releasing reports comprising major macroeconomic data. The aim is to make essential data easily accessible in a simple analytical format. The reports will be more than a mass of data and analyse the health of the economy and give an outlook on a monthly basis.

The practice of releasing periodic reports is followed by private banks, economic research organisations and credit rating agencies. But the Planning Commission’s move means all these will face competition.

“We are currently working on the format in which such reports can be prepared and put in the public domain. It will be on the lines of the economic reports put out by private agencies,” said a source in the know of the matter.

The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) and the Reserve Bank of India publish reports summarising past data along with their outlook. The government also presents to Parliament a mid-term review of the economy in December and the Economic Survey before the Budget.

But no government agency regularly comes out with any analysis of the data put out by the government. For the record, the finance ministry makes public a monthly update of the economy, but it is a mere compilation of all major economic data without any analysis.

Till now, what the government has been doing is aggregation of data which is open to analysis by others. But future reports will give an official analysis of the state of the economy on a regular basis.

That’s good news for economic experts. “The government’s view through such reports will of course add value to the data and will be useful for everybody. A monthly report from the Planning Commission will add to the efforts to make the economy more transparent and the government more accountable,” said Suresh Tendulkar, former chairman of the PMEAC.

Tendulkar, however, warns that such an analysis should not be held sacrosanct.