Government to bring in new base year for GDP calculation

New Delhi: The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) will, in next few months, decide on a new base year for calculating the GDP and is working to bring in a new series for national accounts in place of the existing base year of 2011-12, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Though the year 2017-18 is under consideration as the new base year, no final decision has been taken as the committees of experts are awaiting some more data before finalising their opinion, MOSPI Secretary Pravin Srivastava said at an industry chamber Ficci-organised conference here.

"The decision to change the base year (of GDP) would be taken in the next few months. We are waiting for Annual Survey of Industries and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. All the preparatory work is getting ready for that. Once the result is out, we will place it before the respective committees to decide about the base year," Srivastava said.

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In January last year, the Statistics Ministry had said that it is set to change the base year of national accounts to 2017-18 from 2011-12 after completion of the household consumer expenditure survey and labour force data by the end of 2018.

"My ministry has planned to revise the base year of National Accounts Statistics to 2017-18. The preparatory work for this huge exercise has been started," the then Statistics Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda had said while addressing a press conference on the government`s performance over a three-year period.

Former Chief Statistician TCA Anant had said: "Once the results of the employment survey and household consumer expenditure survey come out then a base year can be changed. Those are critical inputs into the base revision."