Regional Accounts: A Perspective

In the compilation of National Accounts Statistics and State Domestic Product (SDP), the surveys of unincorporated enterprises have been widely used for building up the estimates of value added. From the scattered data available from the Reports of these surveys, it is observed that the relative standard errors of the estimates at disaggregated industry and/or state levels are relatively high, reflecting on the validity of these estimates. The value added for these segments is worked out as a product of value added per worker available from the results of the enterprises surveys and the number of workers from the Surveys of Employment and Unemployment, carried out separately in various rounds of the National Sample Survey Organization. As a prelude to this exercise, it is felt necessary to examine the precision of the estimates at disaggregated levels, to ensure credibility of the derived value added estimates. This assumes considerable importance when the inputs for each of the segments are sourced from multi subject surveys covering all the occupations, as distinguished from the single subject surveys, as the sample size may not be adequate in some cases for obtaining valid estimates. In the context of sub national estimates, it is also necessary to pool the results of Central and State samples to derive valid estimates, if the differences are in tolerable limits. Against the background of work done on the SDP by the State Bureaus and other research studies in the area, database needed for sub national estimates with micro macro linkages for building up macroeconomic accounts is also indicated, with special reference to the state specific Flow of Funds Accounts, which could complement the accounts on the real side.