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The Central Statistics Office has only released supply-use tables (SUTs) for 2011-12 and 2012-13 now, but plans to work these out for the following years as well.
This is for the first time the CSO has compiled the SUTs with 140 products and 66 industries of the Indian economy.
“The GDP derived from the production side and expenditure side often do not match. This can be obviated by the compilation of SUT,” said T C A Anant, chief statistician of India.
The supply-use tables are like the input-output matrix but cover more data than the latter. These would cover both services as well as manufacturing, unlike the input-output matrix, which covers only factory production.
The supply table describes the supply of goods and services, which are either produced in the domestic industry or imported. The use table shows where and how goods and services are used in the economy.
Discrepancies arise because the expenditure side of GDP is computed using production-side numbers. The difference is given as discrepancies. After estimating gross value added in production side, indirect product taxes are added and subsidies subtracted to arrive at GDP. On the expenditure side, there would always be discrepancies until the SUT comes out. These inaccuracies could be because the break-up of GDP at market prices (which is a new definition of GDP) either overshoots the headline number or falls short of it.
NSSO surveys, consumption surveys, data on use of services from manufacturing side in the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data and some data from state governments have been used. An official of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation explained that on expenditure side, lots of rates and ratios are used because of which discrepancies emerge, as data is not exactly measured.
In the short run, there will always be discrepancies. These could be eliminated by distributing the numbers pro-rata to the other components of the expenditure side — private final consumption expenditure, government final consumption expenditure, gross fixed capital formation and so on.
India's GDP growth rose 7.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015-16. However, if discrepancies are taken out, the growth would only be 3.9 per cent. This could be corrected once CSO comes out with SUT for 2015-16 as well.
If the break-up of private final consumption expenditure, gross fixed capital formation, government final consumption expenditure, change in stocks, valuables, and net exports exceed GDP, discrepancies will be negative. If it is less than GDP, the discrepancies will be positive. In the GDP estimates of advanced countries, there are no discrepancies due to the SUT. Most countries use GDP at market prices.
