India’s Congress party vows to ‘clean up’ economic data gathering if it wins election
Economists and investors have doubts over the reliability of official figures
New Delhi — India’s main opposition Congress party will review how economic data is collected and interpreted if it wins a general election in May, a senior party official said, amid doubts over the reliability of official data. Economists and investors are increasingly showing they have little or no confidence in India’s official economic data, presenting whoever is elected prime minister with an immediate problem. Palaniappan Chidambaram, a former finance minister and senior party leader, said a Congress government would tackle the deficiencies in data collection. “We would have to set up a high-powered committee. First, to look at what went wrong with the data, and to clean up the data collecting and data interpreting process,” he said. There have been questions for many years about whether government statistics were telling the full story but two recent controversies over revisions and delays of crucial numbers have taken those concerns to new heights. Up to 36% of companies i...
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