India to Update Base Year for Calculating GDP to 2022-23

By Ruchi Bhatia

December 02, 2024 at 6:11AM EST

Employees work on a mobile phone assembly line at Padget Electronics Pvt., a subsidiary of Dixon Technologies Ltd., in Noida, India, on Friday, March 22, 2024. Dixon Technologies Ltd., an Indian contract manufacturer, is benefitting from a boom in new business from clients like Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. and South Koreas Samsung Electronics Co. wishing to use its factories to manufacture goods for Indias rising middle class. (Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- India will change the base year for compiling its gross domestic product to 2022-23 from 2011-12, Statistics Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply in parliament on Monday.

An advisory committee, comprising of government officials, the Reserve Bank of India and members of academia will identify new data sources and advise on the methodology to be used in the revised series, the minister said. The steps will “improve the statistical system,” he added.

Analysts have been calling for faster GDP data releases and changes to the base year. Last month, the government moved the release time for GDP and inflation data to earlier in the day after economists said they didn’t have enough time to analyze the figures.

India’s economic growth slumped to a seven-quarter low of 5.4% in the July to September period, prompting analysts to pare their projections for the year through March 2025.