New Delhi: The government on Tuesday declared its intent to change the base year for calculation of GDP and retail inflation to 2017-18 and 2018 respectively, likely to come to effect by fiscal 2019-20.The previous base year revision for gross domestic product (GDP), the index of industrial production (IIP) and the consumer price index (CPI), or retail inflation was revised to 2011-12 and 2012, respectively, Statistics and Programme Implementation Minister Sadananda Gowda told reporters here while briefing about the ministry's achievements in the last four years."The revisions facilitated more accurate assessment of the progress of the economy and the society.

Steps are being initiated for the next round of revision also, for GDP we would like to revise the base year to 2017-18 and base year for consumer retail inflation to 2018," he said."These principles are aimed at promoting good practices and professional ethics in production and dissemination of official statistics," he added.He made a similar announcement in February this year also.

That time, Mr Gowda said that his ministry intends to undertake several initiatives during financial year 2018-19 "to further improve statistical system to meet the data requirements in the emerging socio-economic scenario of the country." He said the ministry was "proposing to initiate steps to revise the base years of GDP, IIP and CPI".

The new base year for GDP and IIP will be 2017-18 and for CPI, it will be 2018. At present, 2011-12 is used as the base year for calculating the GDP.  (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)