New Delhi: The Economic Advisory Council to the PM Wednesday refuted the claims of former CEA Arvind Subramanian regarding overestimation of GDP numbers and said it will come out with a point-by-point rebuttal in due course.
Subramanian, in a paper, said India’s economic growth rate has been overestimated by around 2.5 percentage points between 2011-12 and 2016-17 due to a change in methodology for calculating GDP.
The Economic Advisory Council will examine in detail the estimates made in Subramanian’s paper and come out with a point-by-point rebuttal in due course, it said in a statement.
Also read: Former CEA lowers GDP to 4.5% in 2011-12 to 2016-17 period & Vivek Katju on Pakistan
“At the moment, it is felt that any attempt to sensationalize what should be a proper academic debate is not desirable from the point of view of preserving the independence and quality of India’s statistical systems, all of which the former CEA is familiar with,” it said.
“These are certainly issues that Dr. Subramanian must certainly have raised while he was working as CEA, though by his own admission, he has taken time to understand India’s growth numbers and is still unsure”, the EAC-PM added.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) had said it follows accepted procedures and methodologies for arriving at projections of national income, while rejecting the contention of the former chief economic adviser (CEA).
India’s GDP is growing @4% to 4.5%! BJP led NDA has manipulated data to show that India is growing faster in their time. The jobs are very difficult to get except at the junior & entry level. The demonetisation ruined it further. Hope that NaMo in his 2nd innings does tackle economy. The bold steps of reducing interest rates by 2%, exemption to income upto Rs. 8.00 lakh & have just have 2 rates of 10% & 20% to jumpstart the economy must be taken.
It is simple, by putting more money in our pockets, spending will increase which will generate demand and will create more jobs. Bold quantum steps are required, not small paltry incremental ones.
Saw a two minute video clip by Ms Latha Venkatesh in which she explained the methodology followed by Dr Arvind Subramanian. He took 17 important economic parameters – like automobile sales – and studied them for 17 years starting from 2001. He found very high correlation between these indicators and the GDP figures till about 2011. Similarly, he correlated India’s economic performance with 17 other countries over this period and found something similar. After 2011, a divergence is observed. Since the period covers both UPA II and the present government, it is obviously not a political exercise. 2. What is important today is to give the economy mouth to mouth resuscitation. Getting into a pedantic, semantic debate with someone who served as CEA for four years will not convince serious investors. Circling the wagons around the past is not the best way forward.