
Statistical upgrade: An index of services production needn’t capture the sector perfectly to prove useful
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s statistics ministry recently proposed an Index of Services Production (ISP), the need for which may seem self-evident, given how this sector’s prominence has grown. “The service sector is the dominant force in the Indian economy, contributing over 50% of the Gross Value Added [GVA],” as a discussion paper on the idea released by the ministry notes, “It has long been central to economic transformation, consistently driving growth, generating employment, and attracting investment across decades.” That’s the good part of our services story. The not-so-good part is the absence of accurate, disaggregated and timely data on the services sector along the lines of India’s monthly Index of Industrial Production (IIP).
A monthly ISP that complements the IIP would provide a better picture of the economy, enabling better analysis and policy formulation. After all, India has more or less leapfrogged the typical manufacturing stage in its structural transformation, going straight from an agrarian to a services-led economy. Since that leap has been in evidence for decades, how come we haven’t had an ISP so far? Pin it on the heterogeneous nature of India’s services sector.
Not only is it enormously diverse, it has a vast informal chunk. This makes it hard to standardize indicators of output so that a representative index can be compiled. Which might explain why this project has moved so slowly.
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