India's Govt macro data not reliable, says RBI

[beijingwalker]

Govt macro data not reliable, says RBI
Partha Sinha, TNN

MUMBAI: The Reserve bank of India (RBI) has said it cannot make policy decisions relying on the data provided by the government. RBI governor D Subbarao said on Tuesday the central bank has been facing severe headwinds on multiple fronts because of the erroneous data published by the government-from advance estimates of GDP to revisions in industrial production (IIP) numbers to the preference of WPI over CPI as the measure for inflation.

"We are handicapped by the reliability of some of the basic data that we need to use in policy calculations," Subbarao said while speaking at RBI's Statistics Day, and warned that poor quality data could potentially mislead policy calculations. "We make policies in real time and if the provisional data that these are based on are inaccurate, the resultant policies can turn out to be sub-optimal choices," he said.

For example, in the post-Lehman era when RBI is in a high alert mode, there have been frequent revisions to data related to GDP, one of the most watched numbers for policy makers, investors and economists, not only within India, but also globally. Like in February 2010, the advance estimate for GDP growth for 2009-10 was pegged at 6.8%. Three months later, this was revised to 7.7% while in February 2011, the quick estimates pegged it at 9.1%-a change of over 40% within a year. "Therefore, policy that per force had to use information on advance estimate of GDP was fraught with the risk of underestimating the growth momentum," Subbarao said.

Economists outside of RBI with whom TOI spoke to also pointed out the problems they have been facing with the erroneous data published by the government. Given the recent track record of such data, these are seen with suspicion. But in the absence of any other alternative, they have to work with unreliable numbers.

A recent report by Siddhartha Sanyal of Barclays Capital pointed out a huge discrepancy between the rise in India's petroleum import bill and the rise in the crude oil prices. The report showed that there was a "surprising stagnation" in India's oil import bill since December 2010. "The average rise in the oil import bill was a mere 6% year-on-year during December 2010-April 2011, despite the fact that global crude oil prices rose more than 30% during that time," Sanyal said. "This raises doubts about the trajectory of India's oil import bill in the coming months," he added. Economists also pointed out some other recent incidents of serious lapses relating to publications of important economic data.

For example, in August 2010, the government's GDP growth data from the income side showed a stable growth of 8.8% while from the expenditure side it showed a miniscule growth of 3.8%. As questions were raised, within a couple of days, the GDP growth data from the expenditure side was revised to about 10%.

Economists also pointed out that of late weekly as well as monthly inflation data are regularly revised by a substantial margin, and mostly on the upside. This, in turn, fails to give analysts and policy makers the true state of the economy apart from hampering policy decisions, they said.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-07-06/india-business/29742448_1_oil-import-bill-gdp-growth-data

 

[Shabz Nist]

You do realize that the RBI stands for Reserve Bank of INDIA ?

 

[beijingwalker]

How reliable are India’s official statistics?
April 6th, 2012

Authors: Ankush Agrawal, IEG, and Vikas Kumar, Azim Premji University

Developing nations like India are data intensive: they need socio-economic information about their population to design redistributive policies.

And, given their obsession with global rankings, they also need information to compare themselves with other countries. But India’s official statistics are not free of errors.

In July 2011, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India expressed concern over the quality of statistics collected by government agencies. A few months later, the commerce secretary admitted that India’s export figures for the April–October period were inflated by US$9.4 billion due to a misclassification of certain items and data-entry errors. Not long afterward, the chief statistician conceded that the accuracy of the Index of Industrial Production is questionable. And now the Planning Commission’s deputy chairman is arguing that the National Sample Surveys systematically underestimate household consumption. Concerns have also been raised about the duplication of efforts to collect statistics across various government departments, the inaccessibility of national data archives, and the infringement of privacy by the government’s data-collection machinery. To address some of these problems the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released a new data policy in 2009 and other related rules in 2011. More recently, the government also passed the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy in early 2012.

How reliable are India

You do realize that the RBI stands for Reserve Bank of INDIA ?

...so what?

 

[kena]

How reliable are India’s official statistics?
April 6th, 2012

Authors: Ankush Agrawal, IEG, and Vikas Kumar, Azim Premji University


How reliable are India



...so what?

He is mainly talking about provisional data which gets corrected in final figures. Unlike China, India has a lot of inbuilt checks and balances and independent agencies like the RBI which ensure that data is reasonably correct. And I for one, would never say that India is doing a great job in this department either. My own assessment is that Indian agencies too are fudging data, especially related to IIP and exports. But it is certainly not of the magnitude of China's. And what about the US / EU...the worst fudgers I would say.

 

[beijingwalker]

He is mainly talking about provisional data which gets corrected in final figures. Unlike China, India has a lot of inbuilt checks and balances and independent agencies like the RBI which ensure that data is reasonably correct. And I for one, would never say that India is doing a great job in this department either. My own assessment is that Indian agencies too are fudging data, especially related to IIP and exports. But it is certainly not of the magnitude of China's. And what about the US / EU...the worst fudgers I would say.

let experts talk,they do business around the world and they have their independent ways to help investors all around the world the make sound judgement.according to those professionals,not PDF Indian posters here,Chinese statistics are"pretty good".

 

[beijingwalker]

CNN:Are China's economic statistics accurate?

By Charles Riley March 26, 2013: 6:57 AM ET
Pose this question to a group a China watchers and you're likely to receive a variety of responses. Some observers are convinced that China is cooking its books. Others believe state statistics are largely reliable and useful for drawing conclusions about the world's second largest economy. Still others will debate the accuracy of certain data classes, pointing to more meaningful alternatives.

Now we have an opinion from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Their verdict? The statistics are pretty good.

The researchers compared Chinese government statistics with other economic measures that the researchers say are "less susceptible to official manipulation."

"Importantly, these models suggest that Chinese growth has been in the ballpark of what official data have reported. We find no evidence that recently reported Chinese GDP figures are less reliable than usual."

This brief paper from the San Francisco Fed won't settle the matter. But mark another tally in the "legit" category.

The paper, written by John Fernald, Israel Malkin and Mark Spiegel, can be read here.

Of course, it's worth noting that China is not the only country to have its official statistics questioned. Just last year, former General Electric (GE) CEO Jack Welch suggested on Twitter that the Obama administration, calling them "these Chicago guys," had manipulated the monthly jobs report for September in order to make the economy look better than it actually was just weeks before the election.

Welch then doubled down, writing in the Wall Street Journal that data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics might not be "precise" or "bias-free." He raised questions over three key statistics -- the labor-force participation rate, the growth in government workers and overall job growth -- saying big one-month gains "have to raise some eyebrows."

Are China's economic statistics accurate? - Economy

 

[Echo_419]

Bejingwalker seems to do a lot of trolling now

 

[Anees]

Jul 6, 2011,

 

[HongWu]

With the rupee at 70:1 against the dollar, India is poorer and poorer. With population booming, India is becoming a bigger and bigger third world hole.

 

[Truth Finder]

With the rupee at 70:1 against the dollar, India is poorer and poorer. With population booming, India is becoming a bigger and bigger third world hole.

I think you have created a parallel universe of your own.
ALL BOGUS.

 

[Psyops]

Don't believe a single word coming out of India. The level of corruption in India is beyond belief.

 

[Truth Finder]

Don't believe a single word coming out of India. The level of corruption in India is beyond belief.

Not beyond China. Ask your Ex-president.

 

[Psyops]

Not beyond China. Ask your Ex-president.

Every country has corruption but India is on another level in the level of corruption.

 

[Hellraiser007]

India do not inflate in huge percentage ..... Simple as that.

 

[hkdas]

Every country has corruption but India is on another level in the level of corruption.

not above china.