The Modi government tried to draw comfort from the fact that the GDP growth numbers put out by the Central Statistics Office were “broadly in line with” the projections made by various national and international agencies. Rather than deflate input values by input prices, the new methodology deflated these values by output prices, which could have overstated manufacturing growth. Pronab Sen, former Chief Statistician, did not agree with the contention that the growth numbers were over-estimated. Based on the assumption of impact on unorganised sector, the GDP growth in 2018-19 is less than 1 per cent than what has been estimated by the CSO,” he added. The controversial paper by the former CEA comes just 10 days after the CSO estimated India’s GDP growth in 2018-19 at 6.8 per cent — the slowest pace in five years.

Source: The Telegraph June 11, 2019 19:18 UTC