FM defends revised GDP numbers for UPA era, says CSO credible organisation

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Thursday defended the revision in India's GDP growth rate during the previous UPA era, saying it was done by a "highly credible" organisation, the Central Statistics Office, which maintains an arm's length distance from the finance ministry.

He said the revised numbers, based on a new formula with 2011-12 as the base year, are globally more comparable as they take into account a far greater representation of the Indian economy and are more reflective of its real state.

Taking on opposition Congress for criticising the revision, he said the Congress had welcomed the upwards revision in growth numbers of the last two years of the UPA regime by the same CSO and had gone to the extent of saying that the "the new GDP series has concludedly established that we did not mismanage the economy".

A day after Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava, in an unusual move, announced the revised numbers based on back series data alongside Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar, Jaitley said, "I don't think any service is being rendered by people who choose to discredit a highly credible organisation like the CSO because its data is based on facts and the revised formulations, (and it is) a continuous exercise because every time you try and improve upon the formulations to make them more representative of the real state of economy."
"The CSO is a highly credible organisation, it maintains an arm's length distance from the finance ministry," he said. "In fact, we also come to know of the data only when it is released. All former individuals and eminent people who headed the CSO are of the same opinion that this data is far more inclusive and far more reflective of the situation of Indian economy and therefore has far greater credibility."
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had Wednesday called the revision a "bad joke."
"Niti Aayog's revised GDP numbers are a joke. They are a bad joke," he had tweeted. "Actually they are worse than a bad joke. The numbers are the result of a hatchet job."
"Now that Niti Aayog has done the hatchet job, it is time to wind up the utterly worthless body," he had tweeted. "The earlier numbers were calculated by the National Statistical Commission. Has the commission been disbanded?"