The Government is planning a survey-based data collection mechanism for services to improve availability of statistics related to the sector.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics (DGCIS) are conducting domestic pilot surveys on services data collection in areas such as tourism and health.
“The CSO and the DGCIS are at present working on stabilising the survey-based mechanism. It will take some time,” Commerce Additional Secretary Rajiv Kher said addressing reporters on Friday.
India, like many other developing countries, has inadequate data on services. It is a big handicap while negotiating Free Trade Agreements with other countries and also framing domestic policies for the sector.
The Reserve Bank of India, which is the only source for services-related data, has divided services into just six broad sectors. As opposed to that, data for goods are available for 12 sectors and 171 sub-sectors. The survey-based data on services will supplement the RBI data.
The Commerce Department is also focussing on developing the services sector beyond IT & IT related services and increasing and diversifying exports beyond the US and the UK.
An Inter-Ministerial Group on services, headed by the Commerce Department, has already set up eight working groups to frame a road-map on realising the full potential of services in six areas. These broadly include IT, telecom, R&D, tourism, medicine & health, creativity & entertainment, logistics and business services.
2-day meet
To get the industry involved in the process, the Commerce Department is organising a two-day Services Conclave on November 12-13 jointly with the Centre for WTO Studies and industry bodies CII and FIEO.
The conclave will discuss issues and bottlenecks hindering exports of services from India. It will also deliberate on a roadmap for augmenting exports of various services to not only diversify India’s services exports but also to position India as a key player in world services trade.
Services exports have increased sharply from just $8.9 billion in 1997, to over $110 billion in 2010 and $140 billion in the last fiscal. India’s share in world services export, too, has increased from one per cent in 2000 to about 3.5 per cent at present.
However, about 80 per cent of services exports from India are in the IT/ITES sector and most of it is exported to just a few markets including the US and the UK.