Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Sunday, Nov 16, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio | Blogs
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio | Blogs |
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Industry & Economy
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Economy Work on new WPI, IIP series slows down
“Out of the targeted 8,000, hardly 3,000 units have responded, which is not good enough to generate an index. The least we need is 5,000.” Harish Damodaran New Delhi, Nov. 15 The Centre’s plans of rolling out revised indices of wholesale prices (WPI) and industrial production (IIP), with 2004-05 as base year and covering a larger basket of commodities, has hit a roadblock. This is on account of the Collection of Statistics Bill, 2007, not getting passed by the Rajya Sabha in the recent extended monsoon session that saw very little business being transacted. The Bill is crucial, as it substantially empowers the Government to collect price and production-related data from all firms, be it companies, partnerships or societies. Under this, units are legally obliged to furnish information for the purpose of official collection of statistics. For the new WPI series, the Centre has targeted collecting price information from 8,000 manufacturing units. This is consistent with its plans to extend the commodity basket from the current 318 to 1,100 manufacturing products, and obtain a minimum of five quotes for each item. “So far, out of the targeted 8,000, hardly 3,000 units have responded, which is not good enough to generate an index. The least we need is 5,000, so as to cover around 60 per cent of the required quotations, and which can gradually go up as more firms report,” said Dr Pronab Sen, Chief Statistician of India. But all this cannot happen if data reporting by firms is done voluntarily as it is now. Although there is an already existing Statistics Act of 1953 — the provisions of which are used to conduct the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) — it has very little teeth. Unlike legislations in countries such as the US, “where they will put you behind bars if you fail to supply the data”, the maximum that the present Act allows is to charge a Rs 500 fine on non-compliant units. “What we are proposing in the new Bill is that the fine be compounded at Rs 1,000 a day. If you don’t give me data for 30 days, you pay Rs 30,000 or Rs 365,000 at the end of the year,” Dr Sen noted. According to him, the majority of firms are not averse to supplying data. “It’s just that they haven’t set up systems to provide information on a weekly basis and assign the job to somebody who will co-ordinate with various divisions of the company. Once the Act makes it compulsory, everything will fall in place,” Dr Sen added. So, when will the country have the new WPI and IIP series? “We have covered more ground in WPI than the IIP. But even the WPI will come out only sometime next April-May,” he told Business Line. Industrial growth slips in Sept; but ‘encouraging’ Calibrating the inflation meter Getting the measure of inflation More Stories on : Economy
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