D&N Haveli floats tender to outsource GSDP estimation

The UT administration, in a public notice by the director of planning and statistics Karanjit Vadodaria on 27 December, invited bids for the calculation of GSDP. “The Director, Planning and Statistics, Daman, invites on behalf of President of India, the RFP (Request for Proposal) in 2 Bid System through e-tendering,” the notice said. Bids can be submitted by 19 January.

Private and government universities, as well as institutions such as the National Council of Applied Economic Research and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and central training institutes such as Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, can bid. To qualify, bidders must have a minimum of five employees, including at least two with PhDs in economics or statistics, and must have experience successfully calculating the GSDP of at least one state or Union territory in India.

An official associated with the National Statistics Office (NSO) for GSDP estimation said: “Beats me why the UT did not think of approaching the NSO, the IMF or the World Bank for help in designing and instituting an estimation framework it can use…outsourcing a core government function is unheard of even in small African countries.” The official declined to be named.

The bids will be evaluated for “experience, research work, surveys, policymaking skills”.

Data collection and assessment will have to be carried out over three months, from April to June. The sector-wise GSDP will have to be computed at current and constant prices, using the “latest available methodology” over July and August. The computations will be for 2015-16, 2017-18, 2019-20 and 2021-22.

The selected bidder must also calculate the growth rates for all three districts, the GSDP to GDP ratio, the per capita income, and “the consumption of gross fixed capital formation”.

An email sent to Vadodaria on Monday seeking comments remained unanswered at the time of publishing.