The government needs to gather macroeconomic data at shorter and higher frequencies, chief economic advisor (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran said on August 12, also noting that states held the key for many of the reforms required to pull economic growth.
Speaking at a conference organised by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Nageswaran emphasised the role of states in initiating factor market reforms.
“Many of the levers we need to pull for economic growth are at the state level,” he noted.
He pointed out that there was a need for granular, frequent and reliable data to make the right decisions.
Calling for synergy between official statistics and other economic data, Nageswaran said that there was also a case to marry GST data and official statistics.
He noted that most of the data comes with a huge lag and pointed out for a need to bring out labour force numbers more frequently.
Moneycontrol has reported that the ministry is planning to increase the frequency of jobs data to monthly.
“Any monthly data released more than a month later becomes practically useless,” the CEA noted.
He also asked for a higher frequency of private final consumption expenditure numbers. PFCE has 60% share in GDP; need to have more granular and more frequent data, he said.
The government will release first quarter GDP data on August 30.
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