NEW DELHI: The finance ministry on Friday admitted that the way the government calculates gross domestic product (GDP) may lead to an overestimation in numbers, but said its extent “in all likelihood is marginal". Reacting to Mint’s Wednesday report, the finance ministry said the problems in the MCA-21 database were being fixed, and that with “continuous evolution of the MCA database, the proportion of closed and non-traceable enterprises has been falling". It said adequate care was being taken to ensure that the GDP numbers were not affected. “I don’t know why the finance ministry is issuing this," said Pronab Sen, former chief statistician. The finance ministry statement seems to support Nagaraj’s contention as it reports a blow-up factor for each year from 2012-13 to 2016-17.

Source: Mint May 10, 2019 15:06 UTC