The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has proposed using UPI merchant-category transaction data as a high-frequency indicator to track private education and healthcare activity across India's schools, colleges, hospitals and clinics. According to the latest approach paper, UPI transactions classified by merchant category codes can separately identify payments made to elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, professional schools, correspondence schools, vocational and trade schools, and other educational services. For healthcare, the data can identify payments to hospitals, doctors, physicians, dentists, optometrists, nursing and personal-care facilities, medical and dental laboratories and other healthcare practitioners. The nominal values of these transactions would be adjusted using the Consumer Price Index for education (CPI-Education) and CPI-Health respectively to derive proxies for changes in real education and healthcare activity.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has launched a comprehensive public consultation process for its proposed expansion of the Index of Services Production (ISP). According to the latest approach paper, feedback can be submitted until October 16, 2026 through the MoSPI website, with the ministry seeking comments from experts, academicians, central government ministries and departments, state governments, financial institutions and other stakeholders. The consultation aims to strengthen the methodology before proceeding with the proposed expansion that would significantly broaden the index's coverage.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (Mospi) has released an approach paper proposing to significantly expand the Index of Services Production (ISP) to include health, education, and public administration sectors. This expansion would increase the index's coverage from approximately 60% to 78.4% of services gross value added (GVA). The three sectors now proposed — public administration and defence, education, and human health activities and care activities — accounted for nearly 21% of services GVA in 2024-25, with public administration and defence leading at 10.68%, education at 7.15%, and human health and residential care at 2.96%. The proposed inclusion would take the coverage of the monthly ISP to approximately 78.4% of total services-sector GVA.
The ministry began compiling the ISP every month in July 2026 on a trial basis, with 2024-25 as the base year. As reported by Business Standard, the index currently covers 19 broad services sub-sectors and uses GST outward-supply data, banking data on loans and deposits, insurance income, and passenger and freight kilometres for transport. The existing framework draws on high-frequency administrative datasets as well as information on outward supplies reported through the Goods and Services Tax system. The proposed expansion would take the index from 19 sub-sectors to 22 sub-sectors, significantly broadening its scope to capture the economy's increasing services-driven nature.
For the new sectors, the ministry plans to measure public and private parts separately using a hybrid framework combining transaction-based indicators for market activities with cost-of-production measures for non-market public services. According to the approach paper, the public part would be tracked through government spending recorded in the Public Financial Management System (PFMS), mainly salaries and grants-in-aid, while the private part would be tracked through UPI transaction data using merchant category codes. In 2024-25, the public sector accounted for 65.61% of education GVA and 42.66% of health GVA, while the private sector contributed 24.91% and 37.21% respectively. Education and human health and residential-care activities together account for a little over 10 percent of services-sector GVA, with education accounting for 7.2% and health and residential care contributing nearly 3%.
According to the ministry, this expanded framework will enable aggregation of sub-sectoral indices into a unified, all-encompassing Index of Services Production that provides a representative reflection of short-term movements of India's services sector. The sectors were previously excluded from the index because they are non-market, exempt from GST or mainly run by the government, with core teaching services of recognised educational institutions and core healthcare services such as hospital admissions and outpatient consultations being GST exempt. As noted in the approach paper, services are often intangible, heterogeneous and produced and consumed simultaneously, making a single indicator such as turnover inadequate to capture real output changes. The move comes as policymakers increasingly rely on high-frequency indicators to assess economic conditions between quarterly national accounts releases, with a wider ISP providing a more comprehensive monthly signal on the performance of a sector that contributes more than half of India's GVA.
