Lagging indicators

Delays in annual reports cause an information vacuum

It is axiomatic that policymaking in a modern, complex economy is crucially dependent on reliable data and information as close to real-time as possible. This is doubly important for a country like India, which relies significantly on government expenditure on welfare programmes in which taxpayer money is dispensed and administered through various ministries and departments. Designing coherent and effective programmes and policies, therefore, requires updated information detailing and assessing the work that has been done by ministries and their related institutions. Most of this vital information is contained in the annual reports of ministries, departments, and autonomous bodies. But according to a Business Standard analysis, just over half the 188 government institutions have released their annual reports for 2020-21. Though this lag could be ascribed to Covid-19-related disruptions in systems, these delays appear to be part of a growing trend. 

The paper’s analysis shows the past six years, part of which fall before the pandemic, have seen a steady decline in reporting schedules. The number of bodies releasing annual reports has declined from 180 in 2015-16 to 102 in 2020-21, with the two pandemic years showing a significant slippage — in 2019-20, only 162 government institutions published their reports and in 2020-21 the number was 102. The disaggregated data shows that ministries and departments tend to be relatively regular, though here, too, there have been steady slippages over the years. Among these are significant spenders of taxpayer money, such as the home ministry, which last released an annual report in 2019-20, and the defence ministry, whose last annual report was for 2018-19. The ministry of law and justice has performed even worse. Its last annual report was for 2017-18. No less concerning, however, is the fact that many departments and autonomous bodies under these ministries have played truant in filing annual reports. Overall, just about 36 per cent of these institutions have published updated annual reports. Among those that are yet to file are the Foods Safety and Standards Authority in India, which last released a report in 2018-19, and the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (last report released in 2019-20).

One reason for these tardy submissions appears to be linked to delays by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in completing audits, without which ministries, departments, and autonomous institutions cannot table their reports in Parliament, which happens before they are released in the public domain. Earlier this week, a House Panel on Papers Laid on the Table in the Lok Sabha summoned a meeting of CAG representatives to discuss the reason for these delays. Under the rules, ministries, departments and so on are required to table their papers in Parliament within nine months of the end of the financial year. That so many government institutions have not been able to do so despite this long lead time is disturbing. No less concerning is that these delays also deprive non-government researchers of access to data to assess government performance, reducing the scope for independent analysis. Taken together with the absence of key data such as an updated Census, which has been indefinitely delayed, and the National Statistical Office’s consumer expenditure survey, which the government scrapped citing “data quality” when it showed a sharp fall in consumer spending for the first time in four decades, the government appears to be operating in an expanding information vacuum.