GDP Data Debate: Govt Clarifies Revisions After Ex-Finance Secy’s 2.6% Growth Claim

The government has clarified the revisions to India’s GDP estimates after former Finance and Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg questioned the official Q1FY27 growth figures and argued that growth at current prices would have been only 2.6% had the previous year’s GDP not been revised down.

Garg, in an interview with NDTV, questioned the official 7.8% real GDP growth reported for Q1FY27.

He said the Q1FY26 current-price GDP estimate had been reduced from ₹86.05 lakh crore to ₹80 lakh crore, arguing that the ₹6 lakh crore reduction in the previous year’s figure had helped make the current year’s 10.3% nominal GDP growth appear stronger.

The government’s clarification comes amid the wider debate over the credibility of India’s revised GDP series and the interpretation of Q1FY27 growth.

Govt Explains Why GDP Was Revised

In its additional questions and answers issued on Wednesday, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) said the change from ₹86.05 lakh crore to ₹80 lakh crore was the outcome of successive revisions to the GDP series and not a deliberate adjustment to raise the current year’s growth rate.

The ministry said Q1FY26 GDP at current prices was initially estimated at ₹86.05 lakh crore under the old 2011-12 base-year series.

After the introduction of the new 2022-23 base year in February 2026, the corresponding estimate was recalculated at ₹80.32 lakh crore, it said.

It was subsequently revised to ₹80.44 lakh crore with the June 2026 provisional GDP estimates and later to ₹80 lakh crore after the new series of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Producer Price Index (PPI) were incorporated, the ministry added.

MoSPI said base-year revisions involve a comprehensive re-estimation of the historical series using updated data sources, coverage and methodologies.

It stressed that the old ₹86.05 lakh crore figure and the latest Q1FY27 estimate cannot be directly compared because they belong to different GDP series.

Revisions Don't Change Underlying Growth

The ministry also addressed concerns over the sizeable statistical discrepancy between production- and expenditure-side GDP estimates in Q1FY27.

According to MoSPI, the discrepancy is a statistical balancing item arising because GDP is independently estimated through different approaches.

As more comprehensive data become available, estimates under both approaches can change and the discrepancy can therefore widen or narrow, it said.

The ministry cautioned that the current discrepancy cannot be used to conclude that GDP has been understated or overstated, nor can it indicate in advance whether the next revision will be upward or downward.

MoSPI said the direction and scale of future revisions would depend on changes in the underlying production and expenditure estimates, rather than a mechanical adjustment of the discrepancy.

The ministry added that at the final-estimate stage, discrepancies become insignificant or zero, citing FY2022-23 and FY2023-24 as examples.