Ahmedabad: BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has been unapologetic in openly deriding his party, lately. In what can be seen as a major allegation, the senior party leader alleged that the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) data on GDP should not be relied on, as it is mostly ‘bogus’.
Speaking to a gathering of chartered accountants in Ahmedabad on Saturday, Swamy alleged that data on GDP from the CSO is ‘bogus’ and that Moody’s and Flitch will publish any data if you ‘pay them’.
“Please do not go by the quarterly (GDP) data; they are all bogus. I am telling you, because my father founded the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO)…. Recently, I went there with (Union) minister Sadananda Gowda…. He called the CSO person, because there was pressure to put out data on demonetisation. So they put out the (GDP) data (saying) that there is no impact (of demonetisation),” he was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
Contrary to what the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had been confidently asserting, Swamy admits that there was in fact, a negative impact of demonetisation on the economy which the CSO did not publish, under pressure from the Modi government.
“I am feeling nervous because I know there is an impact. So I asked the director of CSO, ‘how did you estimate the GDP for this quarter when the demonetisation was on November (2016) and you gave a printed economic survey report on February 1 (2017), which means it went for printing at least three weeks before. So on the first week of January (2017) you submit a report and you calculate GDP to show no impact. How did you calculate it?….So he tells me, that the informal sector’s output last year as a ratio of the formal sector’s output last year, that ratio was applied to the organised sector in January. I told him that relationship has changed. He said, ‘what will I do? I was under pressure to give the data and so I gave it’.
