Crediting state's GDP estimates to national accounts an ideal situation: Eapen

Chief Statistician K V Eapen today pitched for factoring in states' estimates of gross domestic product for tabulating accounts to arrive at national economic growth saying it would an be "an ideal situation".

At present, Central Statistics Office (CSO) estimates national accounts on the basis of various sets of data including index of industrial production, tax collections and agriculture production provided by central ministries and departments.

"It would be an ideal case for our national accounts, if states estimates credit to our national estimates. That would have been ideal kind of solution where each state calculate GDP and that credit to our national account estimates. Unfortunately, that is not the way it happens," Eapen said addressing at a function to mark Statistics Day here.

"There is a need in my view to move towards that ultimately because we are such a federated country, our states are bigger than so many countries. If we don't feed in that system of data which is generated in the state and make them strong then I think we will be losing out in the quality and assurance of quality in national account. It is my personal view."
"When talk about quality assurance, then it should be at their level also. We are going to launch a programme to strengthen the data collection system of states and if required we will take the help of World Bank and the United Nations' statistical agencies."
"The data generation agencies in employment like rural development ministry for MNREGA. There is data coming out of MUDRA programme on micro industries on employment. There is data coming out from Ministry of Labour, EPFO and other such organisation."
He stressed,"Perhaps our time has now come for a coordinated look at sources of data then later we could move together. We, (MOSPI) cannot be only sole organisation for many of these data. We need to coordinate with other data collection authorities."