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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Politically opportune data -Jayati Ghosh

Politically opportune data -Jayati Ghosh

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published Published on Mar 4, 2017   modified Modified on Mar 4, 2017
-The Indian Express

GDP estimates are advance figures, but by the time they are revised only staid economists will be interested in them

Unless we simply dreamt it, demonetisation delivered a massive shock to the economy in early November, which continued well into December because of slow pace remonetisation. The ensuing liquidity crunch affected most informal economic activity and some formal business, and economists generally agreed that declines in demand and disruption of supply chains would have depressed economic activity and employment.

The Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) begs to differ, in its latest “advance estimates” of GDP for the financial year, including the third quarter, October to December 2016. A month ago, the CSO had projected real economic growth for the year at 7.1 per cent, without factoring in the impact of demonetisation because of lack of data. Now, with some more recent data that supposedly takes that impact into account, its projection of economic growth for the year is still 7.1 per cent. If this is to be believed, demonetisation had no impact on the economy in terms of the aggregate national income.

Not surprisingly, this has been seized upon by politicians. The prime minister quickly used this in the UP election speeches to mock the Harvard and Oxford economists (read Amartya Sen and Manmohan Singh) who had predicted negative growth impact. The Congress has questioned the veracity of the data, bringing up one more example of an institution that really should be above the political fray getting involved in it.

Advance estimates are, by definition, rough exercises, based on only a subset of the usual indicators, and typically get revised, often drastically. Placing too much significance on them is not a wise idea, although it may be a politically fruitful one. Also, ever since the CSO changed its methodology for deriving the GDP figures, there have been questions about its comparability with the past data and whether this is the correct way of capturing the reality. These concerns are intensified by the lack of back series of national income data based on the new method.

Some part of the estimates is uncontroversial. For example, agriculture was expected to do much better following the excellent monsoon after a succession of bad years; if anything the projected growth rate of 4.4 per cent is less than anticipated. Similarly, a big part of the GDP increase has come because of public administration, defence and other spending, which grew at 11.9 per cent in the third quarter, and contributed nearly a quarter of the year-on-year increase in GDP.

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The Indian Express, 4 March, 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/demonetisation-gdp-data-remonetisation-cashless-economy-indian-economy-4553196/


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