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The IMF's A-to-D rating of whether a member country's official statistics are good enough for the Fund to carry out economic surveillance.
The Data Adequacy Assessment for Surveillance (DAA) is the International Monetary Fund's judgement on whether the data a member country supplies are adequate for the Fund to monitor that economy. It is part of the wider framework for Data Provision to the Fund for Surveillance Purposes, and it is carried out during the annual Article IV consultation, when an IMF team visits a member country and reviews its economy. Under the framework in force since 2024, an IMF country team answers a structured questionnaire covering five statistical sectors plus the consistency between them, and then assigns a single overall rating on a four-point scale from A to D. The rating and the reasoning behind it are published in a Data Issues Annex inside the main Article IV staff report. The DAA is not a punishment or a sanction — it is a diagnostic that tells the Fund, the country and outside readers where the statistical system needs work.
Type: ProcessFour rating categories — A, B, C and D — replacing the earlier three-way classification, so that assessments no longer bunch in the middle
Sector-wise questionnaire — national accounts, price indices, government finance and debt statistics, external sector statistics, and monetary and financial statistics, plus a section on inter-sectoral consistency
Each sector is judged on data-quality characteristics: coverage, granularity, consistency, reliability, and frequency/timeliness
Published in a Data Issues Annex (DIA) in the main Article IV staff report, replacing the old Statistical Issues Appendix that sat in the Informational Annex
For countries rated C or D, data problems must be explicitly discussed in the staff report; major deficiencies (D) must be raised in the staff appraisal itself
The annex also records progress since the last consultation, corrective actions agreed with the authorities and priorities for IMF capacity development
Frequency: A rising theme since 2025 — appears in economy current affairs, in banking awareness papers, and in UPSC Mains questions on data and statistics
The assessment runs on a fixed cycle tied to the Article IV consultation, and combines objective information about a country's statistics with the country team's own judgement.
Step 1: The IMF's Statistics Department prepares factual data-quality information on the country from IMF datasets and the authorities' own published data
Step 2: During the Article IV consultation, the country team completes a questionnaire, sector by sector, on coverage, granularity, consistency, reliability and frequency/timeliness
Step 3: Each sector is rated, and a median of the questionnaire answers is computed alongside the team's proposed overall rating
Step 4: If the overall rating differs from the median of the answers, the team must explain why — a check against grade inflation
Step 5: The rating, the rationale, the progress since the last consultation and the corrective actions are published in the Data Issues Annex of the staff report
Step 6: For C and D countries, the data issues are discussed explicitly in the report; a D rating must be flagged in the staff appraisal
A, B, C, D (four categories, up from three)
March 2022 by the IMF Executive Board
1 February 2024
National accounts, prices, government finance and debt, external sector, monetary and financial — plus inter-sectoral consistency
B
C — for the second consecutive year
Base year 2024, released 12 February 2026
Base year 2022-23, released 27 February 2026
Base year 2022-23, released in 2026
GDP is measured at current prices and then stripped of price change to get 'real' growth. Two things make that possible: a base year, which fixes the structure of the economy and the weights used, and a deflator, the price index used to remove inflation. India's series was anchored to 2011-12, so it captured an economy before the boom in digital services, platform work and modern retail. For deflating industrial output India used the Wholesale Price Index, which tracks goods at the wholesale stage rather than prices actually received by producers; a Producer Price Index is the internationally recommended tool. When the base year is stale and the deflator is a proxy, real growth can be measured imprecisely even if the arithmetic is faultless — which is exactly what the IMF's C rating pointed to.
It is like weighing yourself on a scale calibrated fourteen years ago, while wearing clothes whose weight you estimate from a neighbour's wardrobe. The reading is not fabricated — it is simply not accurate enough to base decisions on.
For the world's fastest-growing large economy, the quality of the numbers is itself a policy issue. IMF surveillance ratings are read by rating agencies, investors and multilateral lenders, so a weak grade on national accounts affects how India's growth story is received abroad. Domestically the stakes are higher still: GDP, inflation and industrial production data drive monetary policy, the fiscal deficit targets, Finance Commission devolution and welfare targeting, and errors in measurement propagate into all of them. This is why the September 2026 IMF comment mattered — the Fund publicly acknowledged that the new Index of Industrial Production and Producer Price Index series feeding into the national accounts should improve the accuracy of India's GDP estimates, while still asking for further strengthening of the statistical framework.
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Conducts Article IV surveillance and assigns the DAA rating
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI)
Compiles India's national accounts, CPI and IIP; carried out the base-year revisions
National Statistical Office (NSO)
The statistical wing under MoSPI that releases GDP, CPI and IIP estimates
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)
Compiles the Wholesale Price Index and launched the Producer Price Index
DAA = the IMF's A-to-D rating of whether a country's data are adequate for surveillance, published in the Article IV staff report
A = adequate; B = broadly adequate; C = shortcomings that somewhat hamper surveillance; D = serious shortcomings that significantly hamper surveillance
Endorsed by the IMF Board in March 2022, in force from 1 February 2024; replaced a three-category system dating to 2008
Five sectors plus inter-sectoral consistency; judged on coverage, granularity, consistency, reliability, frequency/timeliness
Published in the Data Issues Annex (DIA), which replaced the Statistical Issues Appendix
India 2025 Article IV: overall B, national accounts C for the second year running
Causes: 2011-12 base year, WPI used as a deflator instead of a PPI, informal-sector coverage, production-expenditure GDP gaps
Fixes rolled out in 2026: CPI base 2024 (12 February), GDP base 2022-23 (27 February), new IIP base 2022-23, WPI rebased and PPI launched
It is the IMF's rating, on an A-to-D scale, of whether the statistics a member country provides are good enough for the Fund's economic surveillance. It is produced during the annual Article IV consultation.
In the 2025 Article IV report India's overall rating was B, but its national accounts were rated C for the second consecutive year, meaning shortcomings that somewhat hamper surveillance.
The IMF pointed to the outdated 2011-12 base year, the use of the Wholesale Price Index instead of a Producer Price Index as a deflator, weak coverage of the informal sector, and discrepancies between production-side and expenditure-side GDP.
No. The rating is about the methods, coverage and timeliness of the data, not an allegation that the published growth rate is false. The IMF has continued to use India's official statistics.
MoSPI released a new CPI series (base 2024) on 12 February 2026 and a new GDP series (base 2022-23) on 27 February 2026, brought in a new IIP series with base 2022-23, and a Producer Price Index was launched with the WPI rebased to 2022-23.