The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) organised an interaction with Forecasters & Economists of GDP and CPI in Mumbai, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

At the event, Dr Saurabh Garg, Secretary, MoSPI, highlighted various macro-economic indicators released by the ministry and also updated about the Base Year revision initiated for Gross domestic product (GDP) , Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) .

He also apprised the participants about the newly launched eSankhyiki portal for easy access of time series data on the released indicators.

The Secretary further informed the participants that the ministry is planning to launch a web-based CAPEX survey to fill the gap in Private Sector investment.

Further at the event, two subject specific presentations detailing present methodology and updates on base revision exercises were undertaken for GDP and CPI. Dr V Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor, appreciated the initiative of MoSPI for CAPEX Survey.

An open house discussion ensued afterwards which witnessed enthusiastic participation from the forecasters and economists.

Based on the discussion, the major suggestions emerged including Frequent Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys, to reduce discrepancy in estimation of GDP and Spatial dimension of GDP.

The leaders also discussed the possibility of better coverage of services in the revised series of CPI, and to have a uniform understanding of core inflation, MoSPI may explore compilation of Core inflation.

They further discussed that the lag for GDP data release may be reduced, and the employer provided dwellings may be excluded from CPI to ensure consistency in the data.

The interaction was attended by Ajay Seth, Secretary, DEA, Dr V Anantha Nageswaran, CEA, Nilesh Shah, Member of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India.

Eminent economists including Ganesh Kumar, Member, National Statistical Commission, Ila Patnaik, Former Principal Economic Advisor and Deepak Mishra, Director, ICRIER were among those present.

The event on Tuesday was joined by more than 50 forecasters & economists of various Organizations/Institutions such as RBI, Citibank, ICICI Prudential AMC, Sunidhi Securities & Finance Ltd, Bloomberg Economics, Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities, Nirmal Bang, RBL Bank, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, ICICI Bank and ICICI Bank Ltd.