Agriculture and Its Integration with National Accounts Statistics: The Indian Case

This paper examines the select domains of database on agriculture in India and its use in the national accounts statistics. Though the share of agriculture in total value added has declined considerably to less than a quarter at the national level, several states are still agriculture-dependent. Besides, agriculture provides sources of livelihood to more than half of the total work force. Hence, the reliability of agricultural statistics and their integration to national accounts are of great significance from the productivity and sustainability point of view. The paper examines the methods and sources used to collect statistics on acreage and yield of agricultural crops and also their limitations. It also discusses evolution of the national accounts statistics in India and treatment of the agriculture sector therein. The paper concludes, highlighting some of the problems related to the treatment of the agriculture sector in the national accounts in its present form. In suggesting that the services sector value added has expanded much faster than that in the agriculture sector, many issues such as, how well the agriculture sector data compare and can be integrated with the value added originating from the industrial sector or the services sector, need to be tackled very carefully.