New Delhi: India’s chief economic advisor, Krishnamurthy Subramanian, has asked the National Statistical commission to release the 2017-18 consumer spending survey data, according to a report in the Business Standard. This survey – which the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation had been scrapped due to “data quality issues” – showed consumer spending falling for the first time in 40 years.
“The government had decided to not release the consumer expenditure survey report. But, earlier this year, NSC Chairman Bimal Kumar Roy received a communiqué from the CEA’s office requesting the results be made public as it is used for analysis in the Economic Survey,” an official told the Business Standard.
According to the newspaper, the NSC has not yet met to take a call on the matter, but members have been informed of the request.
Also read: Govt’s Reaction to Leaked Data Has Been to Demonise it: Ex-Chief Statistician Pronab Sen
The leaked National Statistical Office (NSO) survey, titled ‘Key Indicators: Household Consumer Expenditure in India’, showed that the average amount of money spent by an Indian in a month fell by 3.7% to Rs 1,446 in 2017-18 from Rs 1,501 in 2011-12, the Business Standard had reported in November 2019. While consumer spending declined by 8.8% in 2017-18 in India’s villages, in cities it rose by 2% over the same six years.
In February 2020, the NSO announced that it would not be making the survey public.
As earlier reported, consumer spending surveys help set the base year for key macroeconomic data, including gross domestic product. The report, which was approved for release by a working group in June 2019, was withheld due to its “adverse findings”. Following the news report in November 2019, the statistics and programme implementation ministry issued a statement saying it had decided to scrap the survey because of “data quality” issues.
For the 2019-20 Economic Survey, CEA “Subramanian had attempted to estimate the cost of a meal in India, using consumer spending data as one of the indicators, in the chapter ‘Thalinomics: The Economics of a Plate of Food in India’,” the Business Standard report says.