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After 108 economists and former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Chief Economist Gita Gopinath has expressed doubt over India's growth rate, saying that there are still some issues with the way India calculates it.
This comes as a blow for the government as the key argument that senior officials in the NDA government have consistently made is that the GDP figures are accepted by global organisations like the World Bank and the IMF.
While she welcomed the changes made to the GDP calculation in 2015, including the change in base year, she also flagged concerns over the "deflator" used to calculate the real GDP.
Several experts have expressed doubt over the unemployment, growth rate figures and have alleged that the government was suppressing uncomfortable data.
Explaining one such point of contention, R Nagaraj of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research had told IANS that as the employment rate has fallen, one would also expect output growth to have decreased, unless there is a huge rise in productivity per worker for which there is no evidence.
"So, the rising GDP and declining employment rate for the same year seems anomalous," he said.
Nagraj, alongside many economists, in a statement released earlier this month, questioned the government's intent behind the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) methodology revision and called for the restoration of independence of statistical bodies in light of the allegations that the government was suppressing uncomfortable data.
Earlier this year, a report citing National Sample Survey Office's PLFS data, the publication of which was withheld, revealed that unemployment in the country was at a 45-year-high of 6.1 percent in 2017-18.
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