Payment puzzles

The poor quality of official data may be attracting considerable comment now but it is not a new issue. During the construction of Commonwealth Games facilities, an official of the Central Public Works Department approached a bureaucrat in the industry ministry with a puzzling issue. Payments to contractors, he said, were linked to WPI-based prices, but he had a problem. The WPI hadn’t moved much, although the price of steel, a component of the index, had more than doubled and contractors whose payments were linked to WPI were not getting an increase in their payment that they expected. The problem, as it transpired, lay in the non-revision of steel prices data, but since nothing could be done about the past, the compromise was to adjust the steel price data in WPI going forward and raise payments accordingly.