Mudra Job Survey Data Put in Cold Storage Ahead of Polls: Report

The government has faced a lot of flak for not releasing reports on employment.

(Photo: The Quint)

A Labour Bureau survey on the number of jobs created under the Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (MUDRA) will not be released before the Lok Sabha elections, The Indian Express quoted sources as saying.

An expert committee found anomalies in the methodology adopted to arrive at the number of jobs created, the daily said.

This report on employment data will be the third to be kept under wraps. Earlier, the government had withheld the National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO) employment report for the year 2017-18 and the Labour Bureau’s 6th Annual Survey on employment-unemployment.

According to The Indian Express, the committee has asked the Labour Bureau to fix the ‘errors’ in the report, for which the bureau has sought more time. The informal decision is to make the report public after elections, sources said.

Ahead of elections, the government has withheld the NSSO report, which reportedly said that the rate of unemployment was at a 45-year-high.

The Centre did not publish the Labour Bureau’s annual survey, which also pegged the rate of unemployment to a four-year-high of 3.9 percent.

Niti Aayog Asked Labour Bureau to Present Data by 27 Feb

The daily added that think-tank Niti Aayog had asked the Labour Bureau to present the findings of the Mudra survey by 27 February.

The survey covered nearly 97,000 Mudra beneficiaries and at the time of the survey, the number of beneficiaries stood at 10.35 crore. The number has gone up to 15.56 crore now.

The methodology included beneficiaries who had taken more than Rs 50,000 as entrepreneurs, IE quoted sources as saying.

“The Department of Financial Services last August said that around 90 percent of the loans fell in the lowest category of Rs 50,000,” the report said.

(With inputs from The Indian Express)