Key High Frequency Economic Indicators such as GDP (Gross Domestic Products), Retail Inflation based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Factory Output based on Index of Industrial Productions (IIP) will be released with a news base year during 2026, Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Statistics and Program Implementation Rao Inderjit Singh said. In an interview to businessline, he said there is work in progress to integrate artificial intelligence into the official statistical system to develop an AI-based tool for rejuvenating legacy data.
Excerpts
What are the three key changes in data dissemination during the last 11 years?
MoSPI has started disseminating the advance Annual Release Calendar for all its statistical products since the financial year 2024-25 on its website. Data users are able to see the release of the data following the calendar. The Ministry has also released the National Metadata Structure (NMDS) and the Statistical Quality Assessment Framework (SQAF) for statistical products. MoSPI is regularly conducting the data-users’ conference on the disseminated statistical products. It has started disseminating the anonymised micro data of the national sample surveys free of cost for research purposes on its website. It has launched e-Sankhyiki portal offering time-series data of key macro indicators and a comprehensive catalogue of MoSPI data assets through a modern, user-friendly interface. At present, the portal has more than 135 million records and more than 2500 data sets.
One key issue has been base years for key data set such as GDP (Base Year: 2011-12), Consumer Price Index (Base Year: 2012), and IIP (Base year: 2011-12). When can we expect the base years to be revised so that high frequency economic indicators could be more realistic?
The next base year revision exercise of GDP, IIP and CPI is currently underway. For GDP, a new series is scheduled to be released on February 27, 2026, with FY 2022-23 as base year. For IIP, 2022 -23 has been tentatively identified as the revised base. IIP on revised base would be released from 2026-27. For CPI, 2024 has been identified as the revised base year as the item basket and the weightage of the items would be decided based on the NSO’s Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES) conducted in 2023-24. The new CPI series is expected to be published from the first quarter of 2026.
Is there any plan to change the composition of various economic indicators such as CPI? If yes, then what will be those changes and when can that be implemented?
There are around 407 items on which information on quantity and/or value of consumption by households have been collected through field-survey in Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023-24 by the NSO. The results of the survey in the form of a report and the micro data of the survey are already published on the website of the ministry. A weighing diagram of the CPI for the new base is being derived using the data of HCES 2023-24. The weighing diagram has not been finalised yet. The number of items is expected to increase in CPI basket in comparison to the existing series.
Since frequency for labour data has been changed, is there any plan to make household consumption expenditure and other dataset to be more frequent?
Previously, Household Consumer Expenditure Survey or HCES used to be conducted once in every five years. However, two back-to-back HCESs were conducted in 2022- 23 and 2023-24. Based on the analysis of the patterns observed in the two surveys, it has now been decided that the HCES will now be conducted once in every 3 years. Accordingly, the next HCES survey will be taken up during 2027-28.
What are the new surveys being planned?
NSO, MoSPI will be launching two surveys viz., National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) and Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey (DTES) from July 2025. The purpose of NHTS is to assess the spatial origin destination matrix for different transportation modes and influencing factors affecting the mode, destination choice, the price elasticity of travel demand by mode, and opening avenue for further research in railways and enhancing the capacity for transport planning in govt. academia and industry. The data from this survey will be used by Ministry of Railway. In DTES, details of tourism expenditure, information is collected on different aspects like purpose of the trip, mode of transport, accommodation used during the trip, final destination within the country, use of various tourism specific products and services for the trip, etc. This will help the Ministry of Tourism to prepare next Tourism Satellite Account (TSA). In addition, Household Income Survey has also been planned for launching by the ministry from February 2026 for the purpose of estimating average income of rural and urban households. Further, MoSPI has conducted a pilot study on the Annual Survey of Service Sector Enterprises (ASSSE) and findings of the same have been published in the form of Technical Report on 30th April, 2025. The experiences gained during the pilot are being harnessed to launch a full-fledged survey on ASSSE, which is expected to start from January 2026. The results of the same may be expected in 2027. A pilot study covering the unincorporated construction sector is being undertaken during July 2025 – December 2025.
How is the Ministry using Al in compiling and processing the data? What is the plan to use Al at much wider scale?
The Ministry has already started working in this area. Some features of AI/ML enabled chatbot have been included in surveys like ASUSE and CAPEX survey, etc. To facilitate self-compilation by enterprises in the web-portal based CAPEX survey, an AI-powered chatbot has been integrated into the portal. This chatbot assists respondents by providing guidance on the concepts used across various sections of the CAPEX survey questionnaire. The chatbot, developed using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, is designed to offer seamless assistance throughout the survey process. This feature has also been incorporated into the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), launched in January 2025. While the traditional mode of data collection like survey, use of administrative data etc. would continue, the use of AI is expected to strengthen the statistical system. The ministry is working to integrate artificial intelligence into the official statistical system in collaboration with startups and educational institutions in the form of pilot projects to develop an AI-based tool for rejuvenating legacy data, chatbot, classification etc. under Data Innovation Lab.