FinMin hires expert to study individual savings and investment

The finance ministry is likely to rope in IIMS Dataworks, a market research firm, to undertake periodic surveys to create a 360-degree profile (exhaustive details) of the saving and investment habits of Indians.

"We are in discussion with Dataworks, which has excellent data on saving and investments. We are thinking of utilising their services instead of doing surveys on our own," a finance ministry official said.

Detailed data will be collected about occupation, income, tax payers, tax coverages, trace tax leakages; penetration of banking, insurance, mutual fund, pension and equity products; how many people depend on informal channels for credit, the number of farmers are covered by banks, demand for private pension, potential customers of new pension system, how individuals save, where save, amount saved, save daily or monthly.

Data will be collected on basis of particular requirement of different departments in the government.

The survey will assist the government in more effective and targeted public and financial policy formulation on financial inclusion, rural credit, pension reforms, assessing the fiscal impact of the Sixth Pay Commission, direct tax coverage and leakages, financial literacy and broad-basing retail coverage of capital market and mutual funds.

Earlier, the ministry was mulling to start a pilot project to collect comprehensive data on saving and investment pattern with the assistance of the Central Statistical Organisation.

The plan was to conduct regular national surveys in every five years like in the US to generate quality data for utilisation by planners to design policies that have better acceptance by the masses.

"We will be delighted to work with the Ministry of Finance and are in dialogue with it in this regard," said a source in Dataworks.