MoSPI household expenditure survey came amid internal wrangling over future round

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Last Updated28/02/2024

The release of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) for 2022-23 last week came after an internal wrangling over whether to continue with the next round of the survey for 2023-24 or simply junk it.

It is learnt that there was a move by an influential section within the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to shelve the survey’s fieldwork for 2023-24
- That is currently underway, citing the finalisation of 2022-23 survey results.
MoSPI has been working on back-to-back surveys for 2022-23 and 2023-24 to see whether the revised methodology is giving robust and stable results for consumption expenditure.
The intent behind conducting back-to-back surveys for 2022-23 and 2023-24 was to assess the robustness of the revised methodology, officials said.
In the revamped HCES for 2022-23, several new features have been introduced including the segregation of the consumption basket into three broad categories
- Food items, consumables and services, and durable goods — along with inclusion of questions seeking inputs on free items and subsidies under welfare schemes such as foodgrains.

The survey has covered 2.62 lakh households, out of which 1.55 lakh were in rural areas and 1.07 lakh were in urban areas.
The HCES 2022-23 results showed that rural consumption spending rose more sharply than urban spending in 11 years till 2022-23
- With a fall in share of expenditure on food for both rural and urban households.
Rural average monthly consumption spending per person increased to Rs 3,773 per month in 2022-23 from Rs 1,430 per person in 2011-12, a jump of 164 per cent.
This is higher than the 146 per cent increase in urban average monthly consumption expenditure per person to Rs 6,459 in 2022-23 compared with Rs 2,630 per person in 2011-12.