Recent Changes in Measurement of India’s GDP: Overall Issues and Some Focus on Agriculture

This paper discusses (a) changes in measurement in industry and services (b) changes made in agriculture sector and (c) major issues on the measurement of GDP in new series. There are long term or legacy issues in agriculture, industry and services. The paper examines 10 major issues on measurement of GDP in the new series. These are: (1) MCA 21 data problems; (2) separation of Quasi corporations from household sector; (3) effective labour input method; (4) high growth rate of GDP vs. ground realities; (5) GDP at market prices vs. GVA at basic prices vs. GDP at factor prices; (6) GDP production and GDP expenditure method; (7) single vs. double deflation; (8) price deflators WPI vs. CPI; (9) nominal growth vs. real growth; (10) reference point for growth: advance estimates, provisional estimates, first revised estimates and second revised estimates. In our view, although there are some gaps in the measurement of GDP the new series and the methodology adopted are based on 'best advice' from experts available in the country. The issues discussed in the paper will be useful for next base revision of National Accounts Statistics.