New base year for GDP will be finalised soon

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation will decide on a new base year for the GDP series in a few months, a senior official said on Tuesday. The ministry is working to bring in a new series of national accounts which would result in change in the existing base year of 2011-12.

Though the ministry is considering 2017-18 as the new base year, no decision has been taken as the panels of experts are awaiting some more data before finalising their opinion.

“The decision to change the base year (of GDP) would be taken in next few months.

We are waiting for Annual Survey of Industries and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. All the preparatory work is getting ready for that.

“Once the result is out, we will place it before the respective committees (to decide about the base year),” MOSPI Secretary Pravin Srivastava said at a FICCI conference, adding the decision has to be taken considering global and national scenario. He said when new series with 2011-12 base year was being worked out, the ministry thought of revising it to 2009-10. But then the economists decided that 2009-10 was not a good year globally and domestically and finalised 2011-12 as the base year for new series of GDP.