NEW DELHI: First-ever monthly Index of Services Production (ISP) measuring the output of the country’s services industry for 2025-26, including the index for April, will be released on July 14, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) said on Wednesday.
Conceived as the services-sector counterpart to the long-standing Index of Industrial Production (IIP), the ISP will be published every month, the ministry said. Following the initial release, regular indices will be published on the 29th of each month with a 60-day lag.
The new high-frequency indicator will track short-term changes in services-sector output, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of India’s Gross Value Added (GVA).
The trial indices will be compiled with 2024-25 as the base year, in line with the recently revised Consumer Price Index (CPI) series, which also uses 2024 as its base year. The overall index will be compiled using a fixed-weight Laspeyres volume index, with weights derived from sectoral shares in GVA as published in the National Accounts Statistics (NAS).
Nine sub-sectors will remain outside the ISP’s coverage. These include financial services excluding banking and insurance, public administration and defence, social work activities without accommodation, services of membership organisations, personal services, activities of private households employing domestic staff, activities of extraterritorial organisations, government-provided health and education services, and gambling and betting activities.
“Some of the services not covered in the ISP are those either related to core government activities or are dominated by non-market activities and the informal sector,” the ministry noted.
The conceptual framework for the ISP was developed under the guidance of a Technical Advisory Committee constituted in May 2025 and chaired by Debjani Ghosh, fellow at NITI Aayog. The committee’s full report is scheduled for release in the first fortnight of July, MoSPI said.
The ISP will draw on three primary data sources: administrative records for railways, air transport, banking and insurance; goods and services tax (GST) data on outward supplies for most market services, including wholesale and retail trade, real estate, telecommunications and professional services; and the Annual Survey of Incorporated Services Sector Enterprises for health and education services, both of which are exempt from GST.
While international guidelines recommend using Service Producer Price Indices as deflators, these are available only on a quarterly basis and with a 60-day lag, making them unsuitable for a monthly index.
Accordingly, the ministry will use the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) for wholesale trade, sector-specific CPI measures where available, the general CPI for banking and insurance, and CPI non-food elsewhere.
Source: Business Standard
