CURRENT AFFAIRS | 15 JULY 2026
For the first time, India now has a monthly number to track the pulse of its biggest economic engine — the services sector. On 14 July 2026, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) released a trial Index of Services Production (ISP).
The ISP is the services counterpart to the familiar Index of Industrial Production (IIP). While the IIP has for decades tracked short-term movements in factory and mining output, India had no equivalent high-frequency gauge for services — even though services contribute more than half of the country’s Gross Value Added (GVA).
Released on an experimental basis with base year 2024-25, the trial index currently covers about 60% of the formal services sector. Crucially, it is built not from slow surveys but from Goods and Services Tax (GST) returns and administrative data — one of the first large-scale statistical uses of GST information in India.
Early trial readings were revealing: Accommodation and food services grew fastest at +37.2%, while Air transport contracted 13.9% and railway activity stayed subdued. Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran welcomed the ISP as a significant advance for economic monitoring.
🏛️ Constitutional / Legal Framework
- Official statistics in India are guided by the National Statistical Commission (NSC), the apex advisory body on statistical standards.
- The National Statistical Office (NSO), under MoSPI, is the nodal agency that compiles the IIP and now the ISP.
- Gross Value Added (GVA) is measured at basic prices; GDP = GVA + net product taxes — a core national-accounts distinction.
- A base year anchors an index to 100, letting analysts read subsequent months as relative growth.
⚖️ Why This Matters for CLAT
Economic indicators and statistical governance are recurring CLAT GK and current-affairs themes. The ISP is a clean, testable news item: it pairs naturally with the IIP, forces you to recall the GVA-versus-GDP distinction, and illustrates how administrative data (GST) is reshaping official statistics. Passage-based questions may ask you to reason about why services are hard to measure.
📌 Key Facts
| Indicator | Index of Services Production (ISP) |
| Released by | MoSPI / National Statistical Office |
| Launch date | 14 July 2026 (trial basis) |
| Base year | 2024-25 |
| Coverage | ~60% of formal services |
| Counterpart | Index of Industrial Production (IIP) |
| Fastest / slowest | Accommodation & food +37.2% / Air transport −13.9% |
| Data source | GST + administrative data |
🧠 Memory Aid
“IIP makes it, ISP serves it.” The IIP measures things India produces in factories; the ISP measures things India serves — hotels, transport, finance. Same idea, two halves of the economy.
The ISP will stay experimental while MoSPI tests its robustness, but it already marks a milestone: India’s statistical system finally has a monthly window into the services economy that drives most of its growth.
Practice Quiz — 10 CLAT-Style Questions
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