(28 August 2023) Government Data Roundup: Reports by MoSPI, RBI, DARPG, Labour Ministry Among Those Released Recently

In this 36^th edition of the Fortnightly roundup of government data, we look at RBI’s Monthly bulletin along with the updated related to monthly reports like -Payroll,  CPI for Urban, Rural, and Combined, Index of Industrial Production and All-India Consumer Price Index Number of Agriculture Labourers and Rural Labourers etc. Highlights from, National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) – Way Forward Monthly Report for States/UTs are also included. 

Key statistics from these reports are as below.

• The All-India CPI-Rural for June 2023 stood at 181.9 points and for urban, it stood at 179.9. For July 2023, the provisional index for rural and urban stood at 187.6 and 184.7 respectively. These represent an increase compared to the July 2022 values, which stood at 174.3 and 171.2 respectively for rural and urban areas. The combined provisional CPI for July 2023 stood at 186.3 as compared to 173.4 in July 2022.
• There is an increase in the All-India Consumer Price Index Number for Agriculture Labourers and Rural Labourers for the month of July 2023. It increased by 19 points to stand at 1215 and 1226 respectively. 
• For the month of June 2023, the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) with base 2011-12 stood at 143.4. The Indices of Industrial Production for the Mining, Manufacturing, and Electricity sectors for the month of June 2023 stand at 122.3, 141.0 and 205.2 respectively. Further, as per use-based classification, the indices for Primary Goods, Capital goods, Intermediate Goods, Infrastructure/Construction Goods are 146.6, 106.7, 153.2 and 167.8 respectively. During June 2023, the indices for Consumer durables and Consumer non-durables stand at 116.7 and 147.7 respectively. 

Here is a snapshot of other Monthly data published. 

Payroll Reporting in India: An Employment Perspective – June 2023

MoSPI’s monthly report covers the period from September 2017 up to June 2023. Information on the number of subscribers for the three major schemes i.e., Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme, the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) Scheme and the National Pension Scheme (NPS) is provided. 

• A total of 10.14 lakh new EPF Subscribers were reported for the period June 2023, which is higher than 8.83 lakh new subscribers in May 2023.  A majority of the new EPF subscribers were in the age group 18-21 with more than 3.31 lakh subscribers, followed by those in the 22-25 age group. Nearly 4.91 lakh members have exited EPF during June 2023, while around 12.65 lakh members have re-joined EPF. 
• More than 15.08 lakh members are newly registered under the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme (ESI). It is a slight fall from the 15.32 lakh new members in May 2023.
• There are more than 4.53 lakh new subscribers under the National Pension Scheme (NPS) between September 2017 & June 2023. 

National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) – Way Forward Monthly Report for States/UTs

About the report

Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) constituted the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) in 2019 as part of its mandate to boost e-government endeavours and drive digital government excellence. The biennial study assesses States, and Union Territories (UTs), and focuses Central Ministries on the effectiveness of e-Governance service delivery. NeSDA helps the respective governments improve their delivery of citizen-centric services and shares best practices across the country for all States, UTs and Central Ministries to emulate.

DARPG conducted its second edition of the NeSDA study in January 2021. NeSDA 2021 covered services across seven sectors – Finance, Labour and employment, Education, Local Governance & Utility Services, Social Welfare, Environment and Tourism sectors. The NeSDA 2021 report provided suggestions & recommendations for further improvement in the depth and effectiveness of e-Governance service delivery.

DARPG monitors the implementation of recommendations given in NesDA 2021, through monthly review meetings and e-governance conferences. A Monthly progress report is published which tracks the progress made in regard to the recommendations of NeSDA 2021. The objectives of the monthly report include – the saturation of e-services, promote faceless and suo-moto entitlement-based delivery of services, the unified portal and identification of bottlenecks and the dissemination of best practices. 

DARPG has released the fifth edition of ‘National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) – Way Forward Monthly Report for States/UTs’, which provides a detailed overview of the status of e-service delivery across States/UTs. This July monthly report presents the status of e-services, and mandatory e-services (as per NeSDA 2021) and highlights the best practices, across States/UTs. It also underlines the saturation level of e-services provided through the States/UTs through a single unified service delivery portal. Moreover, the report especially features a deeper analysis of e-services provided in the education sector.

 Highlights 

• 13,687 e-services are provided across States/UTs, an increase of 816 compared to June 2023.
• Saturation is at 69% with 1,397 out of 2016 mandatory e-services available. 
• Local Governance & utility services have the maximum number of e-services with 5,203. 
• 21 out of 36 states have achieved saturation of mandatory e-services in Tourism. The environment sector ranks next with saturation achieved in 17 out of 36 states. 
• Madhya Pradesh provides the maximum e-services in the Education sector (122), which is followed by Karnataka (113), Kerala (92), Gujarat (69), and Himachal Pradesh (55)

A few of the best practices in the education sector highlighted in the report include G-Shala (Gujarat Students’ Holistic Adaptive Learning App) developed by the Government of Gujarat, the Common Scholarship portal by the Government of Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh Takniki Shiksha (HPTech) Board portal, digitization of the whole examination process in Karnataka through Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board portal, etc. 

Reserve Bank of India Bulletin – August 2023 

Reserve Bank of India released its monthly Bulletin for the month of August 2023.  The report includes information on current statistics, two speeches and five articles. 

The five articles include: 

• State of Economy
• Shifting Tides: Growing influence of non-Bank investors in G-Sec Market in India 
• Exogenous shocks and India’s Growth performance post-COVID-19
• Agriculture’s dependency on Monsoon rainfall in India 
• Private corporate investment: Performance and near-term Outlook. 

Highlights 

• As per the article on the State of Economy, the Indian economy is poised to regain momentum in the second quarter of 2023-24 despite a stressed global environment. 
• Inflation fell from its peak of 7.3% in Q1:2022-23 to 4.6% in Q1:2023-24. This decline in inflation is largely attributed to the waning of supply shocks. The unprecedented shock of tomato prices spilled over to the process of other vegetables and contributed to a 15-month high of headline inflation, in July 2023. Meanwhile, core inflation has eased. 
• In its July 2023 update of the World Economic Outlook (WEO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised its global growth forecast for 2023 marginally upwards to 3% from its April projection of 2.8%
• In the article, Agriculture’s Dependency on Monsoon Rainfall in India, it is highlighted that the volatility in South-West Monsoon has gone up due to the increase in climatic variations and extreme weather conditions. Since 2016, overall food grains and rice production have continued to expand every year despite lower-than-normal rainfall in 4 out of the last 6 years. However, coarse grains, pulses and oilseeds production remained volatile during this period. 
• As per the article titled “Growing Influence of Non-Bank Investors in G-Sec Market in India”, non-bank entities have absorbed a significant portion of newly issued sovereign debt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-banks are found to be more responsive to changes in Government securities yields than banks. However, banks still dominate the ownership of GOI dates securities in India. 
• Commercial Banks’ ownership share of GOI-dated securities fell from 47% (2009) to 36% in 2022.