The government has outsourced to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy the task of data collection and validation for the industrial sector.
The move precedes the government's decision to revise the base year for the calculation of the index of industrial production from 1993-94 to 1999-2000.
Senior government officials told Business Standard that the revision of the base year would mean the number of industrial units covered by the IIP would go up from 3,000 to 12,000.
The officials added that though an in-principle decision had been reached, the timing for the introduction of the new base year was still to be finalised.
The government is also reviewing the parameters for the coverage of industries. At present, all industrial units with an annual turnover of Rs 80 crore (Rs 800 million), or an annual value addition of Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million), are included.
The Central Statistical Organisation was also trying to put in place a business register, which would provide a list of all units that would form a part of the index, officials said. Preliminary work on the register had started and a pilot project had been undertaken in Andhra Pradesh, they added.
The business register will be prepared with the help of the departments of company affairs and revenue.
The department of statistics and programme implementation and the department of industrial policy and promotion will be the nodal agencies for the task. If there was a variance in the data maintained by various departments, the business register would help in overcoming the problem, the officials said.
The date for the collection of the revised data has been set for December 2002 to ensure a greater representation from the service sectors.
The officials said the decision to rope in CMIE was taken following the CSO's insistence on the validation of data, particularly after some irregularities were noticed last year.
At present, the nodal agencies for the industrial sector gather data on the basis of the returns filed by the 3,000-odd units spread across the country.
As the expenditure department was unwilling to sanction the recruitment of additional manpower for the task of validating the data, the department of industrial policy and promotion was forced to rope in an outside agency.
The CMIE was chosen through a selection process put in place by the department of industrial policy and promotion last year. The agency has already started its work after the contract was awarded towards the end of the last fiscal.
Calculated move