CAVEAT ADDED TO GDP BACK SERIES REPORT

A report by a panel on real sector statistics, which shows that India registered GDP growth as high as 10.78 per cent in 2010-11 and 10.23 per cent in 2007-08 under then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s United Progressive Alliance government, now has a disclaimer attached to it.

“The Committee constituted by the National Statistical Commission has submitted draft reports for wider public consultation. These reports are not final and the figures/estimates are also not final and should not be quoted anywhere. The reports have not been approved by National Statistical Commission or MoSPI,” said a statement on the first page of the report, on the website of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. This disclaimer wasn’t there till Friday.

The data published in the report, which has been put in public domain but not accepted by the government, has led to a political firestorm and started a war of words between the government and the opposition, including between Union Minister Arun Jaitley and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram. “Most of the information about GDP series was already in public domain (for example, we already had a 10.3 per cent per cent growth in 201011 as per the old data, now revised to 10.8 per cent) and thus the buzz about the recent data is intriguing,” said SBI Chief Economic Advisor Saumya Kanti Ghosh in a report on Monday.