Subramanian to head panel to fix issues in reporting govt data

The government has formed a coordination committee under Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian to address issues while reporting Government Finance Statistics (GFS) data. "Currently, numerous constraints are being faced in reporting GFS data, which include manual compilation of data from detailed demand of grants for economic and functional classification and a time lag of more than two years to get final data... To address these constraints so as to enable timely reporting of GFS data to IMF, it has been decided to constitute a Coordination Committee on GFS," a finance ministry's office memorandum read. The composition of the committee will have representation from RBI, the Controller General of Accounts, the Central Statistics Office, the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Department of Economic Affairs, among others. The GFS yearbook is an annual publication of the International Monetary Fund that collects data of the public sector from member countries.

The terms of reference of the committee include putting in place a mechanism for integration of vast electronic data so that the monthly and annual numbers can be compiled and reported at the earliest.

The mandate is also to outline steps to cut down the timeline for completion of state finance statistics to one year from the current three years, it added.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has said a high-level committee on tax laws that was set up in November last year has invited various stakeholders to present their suggestions in order to ascertain areas where clarity is needed.