"No sir. There is no doubt on the authenticity of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO)," Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.
He was replying to a query that authenticity of IIP is being doubted in the country.
It may be recalled that during the time of compilation of IIP for February, it was detected that in the IIP for January, the production data of sugar was incorrectly reported.
To a query, the Minister said "There is also no doubt regarding the IIP released by the CSO for the last 26 months."
"The CSO has a system of checks to ensure accuracy of the data. The production data received from the source agencies are put to certain validation checks by the CSO before releasing the IIP.
"In case, the variation of the production data for a month over the production data of the previous month exceeds 20 per cent, or if the variation of the production data for a month over the production data of the same month in the previous year exceeds 30 per cent, such cases are referred back to source agencies for confirmation," Sharma said.
The CSO also requests all concerned data source agencies to adhere to the time frame for supplying monthly production data so that the data are validated before release of the IIP, he added.
"In order to capture the dynamics in the structure and composition of the industrial production in the IIP, reviews of existing methodology in compilation of IIP such as shifting to a new base year, selection of appropriate item basket, weight assignment, method of data collection etc, are carried out at regular intervals through specially constituted working groups, the minister added.
