Census Dept. to rebase GDP calculation year

• Current base year of 2010 likely to be changed to 2015 says DG
• Oversight of new sectors to be introduced to improve economic measurements

 By Uditha Jayasinghe   

The Census and Statistics Department is working to rebase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculation year from 2010 to possibly 2015 over the next few months, a top official said yesterday. 

Census and Statistics Department Director General Dr. A.J. Satharasinghe told the Daily FT that the base year for calculating national accounts, which was previously upgraded from 2002 to 2010, in 2015 is likely to be changed to 2015 or a year closer to that presently. 

“Earlier both the Central Bank and the Census and Statistics Department calculated national accounts including inflation and growth numbers. However, from 2017 the Census and Statistics Department is the only authority to calculate national accounts,” he said. 

Dr. Satharasinghe noted that the change was in line with international best practices and the previous change of base year was praised by several organisations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The department is also attempting to capture growth in new segments of the economy to better track economic growth with the monitoring of new sectors to happen alongside the rebasing excise starting soon.

 The new sectors will also be decided after consultations with relevant officials, he said.

The Census and Statistics Department gathers data from about 250 government institutions to formulate the different types of national accounts. 

According to the department Sri Lanka grew by 3.3% in the third quarter of 2017, which Central Bank Governor Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy recently described as “disappointing” to reporters. During the press conference he opined that the number may be lower than the true picture. 

The Governor praised the efforts of the Census and Statistics Department to introduce a new framework for calculating GDP but pointed out that it required more surveys, which the department had insufficient resources to compile at present. 

“You need a lot of data to back up this welcome framework so this has caused some concern from our side and we are consulting with them. They have extremely competent people and this is a good system but we all need to work together. Since they don’t have all the data needed, they have to use proxies for certain economic subsectors, which may not capture all economic activity. The department needs to be given the resources to work well,” he said.