Media365
In a major step towards improving the measurement of India’s services economy, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on Monday released the country’s first sub-sectoral Trial Index of Services Production (ISP) with 2024-25 as the base year, providing a monthly gauge of activity across key formal services industries.
The inaugural release covers 19 services sub-sectors for April 2026, representing nearly 60 per cent of India’s services sector, which contributes more than half of the country’s economic output. The ministry said subsequent releases of the sub-sectoral ISP will be published on the 29th of every month, while an overall Services Production Index will be introduced after assessing the stability of the sub-sectoral indices and expanding sectoral coverage.
The new index fills a long-standing gap in India’s macroeconomic data by offering a high-frequency indicator for the services sector, similar to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for manufacturing and industry.
According to the data, 14 of the 19 sub-sectors posted double-digit year-on-year growth in April 2026, while almost all sectors recorded positive expansion.
The strongest-performing segments were:
Among other major sectors, Insurance grew 15.6 per cent, Wholesale Trade 15.3 per cent, IT & Computer-related Services 15.2 per cent, Professional, Scientific & Technical Services 16.5 per cent, and Banking 12.2 per cent.
However, two transport segments recorded contractions. Air Transport declined 13.9 per cent year-on-year, while Railway Transport slipped 0.4 per cent..
The ISP has been developed under the guidance of the Technical Advisory Committee on Index of Services Production (TAC-ISP), constituted in May 2025. The committee, comprising experts from academia, industry and government departments, provided the conceptual and methodological framework for compiling the index. Its report was released earlier this month.
MoSPI said the trial ISP uses multiple data sources depending on the nature of each service industry. These include administrative data for sectors such as banking, insurance and transport, GST data for trade, hospitality, telecom, IT, real estate and other market services, and the Annual Survey of Incorporated Services Sector Enterprises (ASISSE) for deriving sectoral weights.
For inflation adjustment, the ministry has used the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) for wholesale trade, while sector-specific or proxy Consumer Price Indices (CPI) have been employed for other services.
The ministry said the index currently focuses on the formal services economy, as data availability for several government and informal sector activities remains limited. It plans to expand the scope before launching a comprehensive overall Services Production Index.
