By Tarunkumar Singhal, Raman Jokhakar, Chartered Accountants
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Making official statistics accurate and current must be a prime concern. Official figures seem to have little or no link with reality. Industrial output, as gauged by the index of industrial production (IIP), reveal great volatility and mismatch with logical correlates such as power generation and cargo movement, in the aggregate and in particular sectors such as capital goods. Also, often, IIP data is at variance with published financial results of companies.
Now the base year of the index was changed to 2004-05 last year, and there is a big increase in the number of items tracked, to 399. But there is reason to believe that the raw data piling up in the 16 source agencies and departments for the IIP are not being processed either in a timely manner or, worse, entirely.
Reports suggest large vacancies in statistics cells across government departments. It is entirely possible that skilled data specialists are moving to greener pastures in the private sector. In the digital age, making sense of data is big business, of course.
Official statistics are either dated or erroneous today. Policymakers are often unable to fathom IIP trends. The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008, was notified last year, and the earlier 1953 law repealed. Chapter IV of the Act concerns offences and penalties, for refusing to supply particulars, false statements and ‘mutilation and defacement’ of information, and so on.
But there is nothing in the law that penalises nonprocessing and skewed interpretation of raw data in the various departments and ministries. The Statistics Act’s neglect of data processing by government agencies, seems to have compromised reliability and dependability of the official numbers. Speedy correction is essential. The entire policy process would be suspect without reliable official figures.
(Source: The Economic Times dated 06-10-2012)
