Eco survey: India a recovering economy, not a surging one, says Subramanian

Government’s new GDP methodology is “puzzling” for none other than Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, who today said the new numbers show growth to have accelerated during 2013-14 despite that being a “kind of bad year”.

“I am puzzled as I said because the fact that…especially what happened in 2013-14, that number is puzzling because that is a kind of bad year, yet growth accelerated,” Subramanian said.

He was replying to a query on if he thinks there is a case to revisit the new methodology for measuring Gross Domestic Product( GDP).

“The balance of evidence shows that India is still a recovering economy not a surging economy,” the Chief Economic Adviser added. Subramanian, however, said that everybody needs to reflect on the numbers to understand why they are and what they are but meanwhile they have to use that number. A change in base year for computing national accounts last month has pushed up the economic growth rate for 2013-14 to 6.9 percent. The earlier estimate of GDP growth for India for 2013-14 based on the basis of old series was 4.7 percent.

These changes follow a revision in the base for calculating national accounts to 2011-12 from 2004-05. The base year was last revised in January 2010. The CEA, however, added that the improvement in data and methods put India on par with international standards of GDP estimation. The new methodology has made India the world’s fastest-growing big economy.

PTI