Centre to launch monthly Index of Services Production from July 14
New Delhi, July 7
The government has finalised the framework for India's first Index of Services Production, 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
Reader Comments
Interesting development. As someone who works in economic research, I appreciate the transparency about using aggregated GST data rather than unit-level. The 60-day release timeline is also reasonable - faster than many developed economies manage for their services indices. But will this actually help small businesses in the unorganised sector? Health and education are still mostly unorganised in India.
Great initiative! But I hope they also include the gig economy workers - Swiggy delivery partners, Urban Company beauticians, etc. They contribute so much to the services sector but are often invisible in official data. Also, the trial period is crucial - let's hope they correct any methodology issues before making it permanent. 💪
A much-needed step. The services sector has been the backbone of India's post-pandemic recovery, but we had no monthly gauge until now. Using GST data is smart, but I'm curious about the coverage of exempt sectors - health and education are huge and mostly cash-based. How will ASISSE data compensate for that? Hope the technical committee has thought this through.
This is excellent news for policymakers and investors. With services being such a large part of our GDP, monthly data will help in better fiscal planning. The Laspeyres index with 2024-25 base year is a robust approach. However, I hope the government also releases sector-wise data separately - banking, IT, tourism all behave very differently. 🙏
Good move but must say - the real challenge is accurate data from the unorganised sector. Most small service providers
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