SBI launches first homegrown economic indicator

The country now has another monthly economic index, with the State Bank today launching a tool that will primarily track manufacturing activity to offer a forward-looking economic trends.
The SBI Composite Index rivals the existing data point from British lender HSBC.
The SBI index has been developed on the basis of the bank's internal loan portfolio, which mirrors the credit demand in the country, and other data sets available in public domain.
"The Index will analyse data from both manufacturing and services industries to determine expansion or contraction in the economy," SBI Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya told reporters here while announcing the product.

The bank has created two indices - the SBI Monthly Composite Index and the SBI Yearly Composite Index. Both fulfil complementary purposes such as month-on-month sentiment movement and year-on-year growth forecast, respectively.
The index will also take into account other indicators of economic activities such as consumer spending, mining, interest rates, inflation and exchange rates on a monthly basis. The indices will be released every month post-RBI's credit growth numbers, she said, adding the data collection will not be outsourced as is the case with the HSBC data.
Markers at present depend on HSBC India Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) and HSBC India Services Business Activity Index to get clues about economic trends.

The Index will help policymakers and market participants to identify turning points in the manufacturing cycles in advance and adjust their investment plans or strategy, Bhattacharya said, adding it will not pre-empt anything.