New IIP series launched: new base year, surgical devises added

The government launched a fresh series of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) with the new base year being 2011-12 in alignment with the base year of other macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, along with the target to track economic activities with more accuracy. Earlier, the IIP was calculated on base year 2004-05.  

The new series will have a total of 809 items in the manufacturing sector in the item basket (405 item groups) compared to the 620 items (397 item groups) in 2004-05 series. While a total of 149 new items like steroids and hormonal preparations, cement clinkers, medical/surgical accessories, pre-fabricated concrete blocks and refined palm oil are added to the new series, 124 items such as biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) films, calculators, colour TV picture tubes, gutka have been removed. 

The new series will include data on electricity generation from renewable sources, whereas capital goods data in the new series will be captured in terms of ‘work in progress‘ in order to represent the growth of capital goods more coherently and also to avoid recording of production figures in bulk after the production. 

The use-based classification has also been recreated by replacing 'basic goods' with 'primary goods' and introducing 'infrastructure/construction goods' category. With an increase in number of factories in panel for reporting data, the factories are removed.  

The IIP gives a comprehensive outlook on output of different types of goods such as basic, consumer and capital goods, helping in fathoming the level of economic progress and investments in the economy.