INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Economists are bracing for possible big swings in the quarterly gross domestic product dataThe coronavirus pandemic has made the job of
predicting India's economic growth -- already a fraught process in normal times -- even harder.Economists are bracing for possible big
swings in the quarterly gross domestic product data scheduled for release on August 31 and significant revisions going forward
The statistics office suspended field surveys for several months after the country went into lockdown in March, resulting in substantial
data gaps.Forecasts for GDP in the quarter through June range from a contraction of 15 per cent to a decline of 25.9 per cent, with a median
estimate of -19.2 per cent -- representing the worst performance since India started reporting quarterly data in 1996.Measuring last
add to the data complexities, with output in several sectors likely to be estimated and later revised once the hard numbers become available
in Mumbai.Incomplete price-level data, which are used as deflators to arrive at real growth, would also affect GDP numbers, he said.Even
before the pandemic, India's GDP statistics have been a source of contention
A change in the methodology to calculate GDP introduced in 2015 made forecasting difficult, prompting some economists to use their own
trackers of high-frequency indicators, which compare more closely with the old GDP series
Some are now relying on proxies to estimate output in the three months to June.Economists are already updating their forecasts based on
numbers available from alternative sources, like companies and tax collection.State Bank of India's Soumya Kanti Ghosh revised his fiscal
