Articles by K G K Subba Rao

The Reserve Bank of India revamped the flow of funds compilations to be in conformity with the sectoral classification recommended in the System of National
Accounts 2008, which has also been adopted in the revised series of National Accounts Statistics, brought out by the Central Statistics Office. Though the revisions made in the compilations of the two organisations are expected to bring about refinements, wide discrepancies have been noticed between the financial
resources gap emanating from the flow of funds accounts and the investment–saving gap derivable from the National Accounts Statistics. The revisions inducted
into the respective accounts emphasise the need to reduce the discrepancies between the two sets of accounts to an acceptable level.

In the revised series of National Accounts (base year 2011-12), the sectoral coverage of the private corporate sector has been widened to include quasi-corporations, while the Central Statistics Office has begun compiling an estimate of the private corporate sector using the Ministry of Corporate Affairs' MCA-21 database. This is a radical departure from the practice followed so far, and the MCA-21 database and the other sources of data as also the methodological details are examined here to suggest improvements for refining the estimates.

This article critiques Arjun Jayadev et al's 'Patterns of Wealth Disparities in India during the Liberalisation Era', detailing problems with the data used as also the means of deflation of the stock of physical and financial assets held by households.

Two important surveys, viz, the Situation Assessment Survey and the All-India Debt and Investment Survey were conducted in the 59th round of the National Sample Survey Organisation in 2003. A common topic was the indebtedness of farmer/cultivator households. The estimates of incidence of debt, extent of indebtedness and also the pattern of debt owed to institutional and non-institutional agencies, showed wide variations among different states and also at the all-India level in the two surveys, mainly because of the differences in concepts, definitions, methods of data collection, sample design, etc.

The new website launched by the Reserve Bank of India on macroeconomic indicators of the Indian economy, is aimed at providing useful and relevant information to researchers, analysts and general users. It includes significant data on the financial and real sectors, markets, and public and corporate finance. There are certain gaps that can be observed, but once filled, the website promises to be one of its kind.