“Industrial activity in India is influenced by seasonal factors such as monsoons, festivals, and year-end expenditure. Without proper adjustment, quarterly growth can reflect temporary spikes rather than the underlying economic momentum,” Garg said in an interview to TOI.
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“A seasonally adjusted series allows better quarter-to-quarter comparability, clearer identification of cyclical turning points, and reduced short-term volatility.” He noted that generating these estimates requires at least five years of historical data and may be revised alongside annual benchmarks.
The government plans to release seasonally adjusted quarterly GDP estimates following the back-series, with annual series adjustments to follow.
The overhaul is part of the government’s broader reset where economic data is being revised to add updated benchmarks and statistics to enhance accuracy and make the data more comprehensive.
This comes after the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in November 2025, outlined the methodological weaknesses for India’s national accounts statistics and assigning it “C” rating, which reflects that data provided to the fund have some shortcomings that somewhat hamper surveillance.On the new CPI series, Garg said the updates have been broadly welcomed by the RBI, academics, and businesses.
“The basket has expanded from 299 to 358 items, with improvements such as rural house rent inclusion, better service representation, and integration of administrative data for fuel and fares. While headline back-series data and linking factors are available, adoption of the COICO framework makes direct item-level comparisons technically complex,” he added.
Addressing concerns over the credibility of national accounts and employment data, Garg said, “Over the past two to three years, several reforms have been undertaken to strengthen the quality, transparency, and reliability of official data. We are also revising base years for major macro-economic indicators and have published an advance release calendar for the upcoming fiscal to ensure timeliness.”
On employment statistics, Garg defended the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). “The PLFS broadly follows the internationally accepted 13th ICLS recommendations for measuring labour force participation, employment, and unemployment. Differences in perception often arise from how employment is defined, not from weaknesses in survey methodology itself,” he said.
The new GDP series will also introduce several technical improvements.
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“It will provide better coverage of household and unorganised sectors through the unincorporated sector survey and PLFS, unlike the indicator-based extrapolation used in the current series. Administrative data from sources such as GST, Vahan, PFMS, and the petroleum and gas sector will also be integrated. For multi-activity enterprises, value added will be more accurately allocated across different business activities, and LLPs will now be comprehensively covered,” Garg explained.
“Additionally, the revised series will eliminate the single deflator for manufacturing and agriculture, applying double deflation where feasible, and a single deflator or volume extrapolation for the services sector where needed.”