The 'tentativeness' of IIP numbers got highlighted as never before when Dr. T.C.A. Anant, Secretary, MoSPI, admitted to a grave statistical error in inputting sugar production at 134.08 lakh tonnes in January IIP, against 58.09 lakh tonnes that should have been taken. Correction of this mistake along with other minor revisions has pulled down the IIP growth in January to 1.1 per cent, from 6.8 per cent earlier, and that in manufacturing to 1.4 per cent against 8.5 per cent put out initially.

Policymakers in government and private sector have been shocked at repeated occurrences depicting carelessness by officials in statistics collation that is used as pointers in policymaking. Blame game has already started in the IIP data bungle, but what we would desire is that even as all statistics are important, a little more care is called for while handling data of particularly some major industries that have large weights with a consequential potential to sway the aggregate.

By the way, what has upset analysts, apparently, is the highly skewed distribution of industries in IIP, where a change in a solitary sugar industry could have such a profound impact on aggregate IIP. According to our rough compilation, there are some 17 industries which account for around 43 per cent of total weight in IIP, while the other 665 industries together constitute 57 per cent of IIP numbers.