The government will come out with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) data with the new base year during 2019-20. It also plans to bring out an employment survey by the end of this calendar year.

At present, the base year for GDP is 2011-12 while it is 2012 for CPI. “There is a need to change the base year for GDP to 2017-18 and for CPI to 2018. Steps have been initiated,” Union Minister for Statistic and Programme Implementation DV Sadananda Gowda told reporters here on Tuesday. Ministry officials added that new data, with new base year, will be out during the next fiscal. Base year revision is normally done once in five years to accommodate and factor in the changes that take place in the economic scenario of the country.

GDP is a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period of time. Normally, there are two types of GDP — nominal and real. Real GDP is adjusted for inflation while nominal is not and therefore it always appears higher than the real GDP. For example, real GDP for 2017-18 is 6.7 per cent while nominal GDP is 10 per cent. However, it is real GDP which becomes the headline. Similarly, CPI gets prominence as it tracks change in inflation of various goods at the retail level and is known as retail inflation. It is the base for changes in policy interest rate.

Job data

Clearing the air on job data, Gowda said a total of “41.26 lakh jobs were created in the formal sector during September 2017 and April 2018.” This is based on data from the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). Questions have been raised on the methodology as many people quit jobs and close the account but start a new job with a new account making it difficult to assess job creation. However, Gowda said most of 41.26 lakh data comprise people between the age group of 18 and 35, the age bracket defines fresh job accretion.

The Ministry is responsible for monitoring of Central Sector Infrastructure Projects costing ₹150 crore or more. According to Gowda, as on March 1, a total of 1,304 projects are being monitored through Online Computerised Monitoring System (OCMS). During the last four years, the number of projects under monitoring have increased from 710 to 1304. The monitoring has resulted in reduction of cost overrun with respect to original cost from 19.4 per cent in March, 2014 to 13.4 per cent in February, 2018 and reduction in the time overrun with respect to original schedule from about 30 per cent in 2014 to 20 per cent in 2018.

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