New Delhi, July 7 (IANS) The government has finalised the framework for India’s first Index of Services Production (ISP), with the trial monthly series set to be released on July 14, marking a major step towards improving the measurement of the country’s services sector, according to an official statement on Tuesday.

For the first time, the proposed ISP will provide a comprehensive monthly measure of short-term movements in India’s formal services sector and complement the existing Index of Industrial Production (IIP), the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) said.

The services sector contributes nearly 53 per cent of India’s Gross Value Added (GVA), generates substantial employment and has emerged as a key driver of economic growth, investment and exports.

According to the ministry, the availability of Goods and Services Tax (GST) data has significantly enhanced India’s statistical system by providing monthly information on outward supplies reported by millions of businesses.

For the proposed index, MoSPI will use aggregated GST data shared by the GST network along with administrative datasets from sectors such as railways, aviation, banking and insurance.

Data from the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises in Services Sector and Establishments (ASISSE) will also be used to cover GST-exempt sectors such as health and education.

However, the ministry clarified that it does not access or require unit-level GST data for compiling the index.

To develop the new index, MoSPI constituted a Technical Advisory Committee on Index of Services Production (TAC-ISP) in May 2025 under the chairpersonship of Debjani Ghosh, Distinguished Fellow at NITI Aayog, it added.

The committee held extensive consultations on the conceptual, methodological and operational aspects of the index. An approach paper was released for public comments in April this year, before the final report was prepared.

The report recommends compiling the index as a Laspeyres volume index with 2024-25 as the base year, using Gross Value Added weights and publishing sector-wise indices at the two-digit NIC 2025 level.

Moreover, the committee has recommended that the overall and sub-sectoral indices be released initially on a trial basis to gather stakeholder feedback and validate the methodology.

It also proposed that the ISP be compiled every month and released within 60 days of the reference month, providing policymakers and businesses with a timely indicator of activity in India’s services economy.

–IANS

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