It’s official now! India grew faster than earlier estimates

NEW METHODOLOGY Fresh statistics put per capita income at `80,338 against `74,380 earlier

NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modiled government, engineering an economic rebound with a slew of reforms, on Friday unveiled a new statistical method to calculate the national income with a broader framework that turned up a pleasant surprise: GDP in the past year 2013-14 grew 6.9% instead of the earlier 4.7%.

Apart from marginally reducing `10,000 crore from the economy’s size, the data that relies on value added at various stages of the production chain rather than a toting up of expenditure, covers everything from farm-level livestock to mega infrastructure projects and trendy smartphones to capture activity across the country.

According to the latest method, India’s GDP at current market prices (2013-14) is valued at `113.45 lakh crore compared to `113.55 lakh crore in the old data series.

Similarly, the annual average income (per capita income) now stands at `80,338 compared to earlier estimates of `74,380. The economic growth rate for 2012-13 has also been revised upwards to 5.1% from 4.5 % estimated earlier.

The base year of the national accounts is changed periodically to factor in structural changes in the economy and present a more realistic picture of macroeconomic aggregates.

The new series, which has been in the works for a couple of years, includes data on unorganised manufacturing and services and income from public private partnership (PPP) projects, among others.

The data for corporate is now collated from the corporate affairs ministry’s MCA21 records, a comprehensive compendium that allows collecting output information from about 500,000 firms.

In the earlier series, such data was taken primarily from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) study on company and finances.

The new series also incorporates results of recent national sample surveys such as those on enterprises, unemployment, debt and investment, situation assessment of farmers and survey of land and livestock holdings.

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