The 2016-17 Economic Survey data assessing the impact of demonetisation on the informal economy was incorrect, according to Subramanian Swamy, Rajya Sabha member of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
In a meeting convened after Budget 2017 by the Union Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation DV Sadananda Gowda, Swamy had quizzed the government's statisticians on how they procured the data, he told BloombergQuint's Sanjay Pugalia.
“I asked the director: you presented such a nice Economic Survey on Feb. 1, 2017, you must have got the data for this on Jan. 1, since you couldn't have sent it for printing after that. The Jan. 1, 2017 data that you got must have been, at its latest, of Dec. 1, 2016. In that, how did you get the data on the informal sector? Normally, the NSSO does a survey once in two years. That's what is used to get a true sense of what's happening in the informal sector. Where did the data come from since there hadn't been an NSSO Survey round then,” Swamy said.
Swamy claimed that the response was that the team used the previous year's data on the formal-informal economy share, which was extrapolated to the following year.
The number he gave had to be incorrect, because the previous year's economy was normal, before the note ban.Subramanian Swamy, Rajya Sabha MP, BJP
Watch the full interview here:
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