Base year for calculating GDP should be changed, expert says

Head of general Statistical Office (GSO), Do Thuc said that the agency is studying and collecting statistics to take 2010 as base year for calculating Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and some other economic indicators, instead of the base year 1994 like present, VnExpress reported.

The change is essential to have accurate measures on real status of Vietnam’s economy, he noted.

“Now the countries in the world usually maintain a principal period of 5 years to calculate GDP (meaning that they change base year for calculating GDP every 5 years). Thus, Vietnam’s 1994 base year is too far”, he said.

The calculation of GDP on the base year of 1994 affected to the rating of international agencies on Vietnam’s statistic quality. According to World Bank research group, Vietnam now stands at the 7th position among nine southeastern Asia countries subject to the bank’s statistic rating.

“Costs for each change in base year for calculating GDP are very high because agencies will have to collect overall social-economic data of the whole year that is taken as base year. However, to ensure the accuracy of statistics in following years, we start to collect data to change base year of GDP and other indicators to 2010″, he emphasized.

Particularly, Consumer Price Index (CPI), its base year was changed to 2009 already, so will not be in the change plan. Current CPI reflects price band in Vietnam exactly with nearly 600 categories.

In April 2011 alone, the whole country’s CPI rose 3.22 percent against the previous month, bringing to a rise of almost 10 percent in CPI since the year early. – Vietbiz24

Tags: Vietnam economic, Vietnam economic growth, Vietnam economy, Vietnam economy 2011

Posted by VBN on Apr 30 2011. Filed under Economy News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry