India Gets Its First-Ever Monthly Services Scorecard — Why the ISP Matters

MoSPI has launched the Index of Services Production (ISP), India's first high-frequency monthly indicator for the formal services sector — filling a data gap that left policymakers guessing about more than half of India's economy in real time.

The Gap This Fills

India has tracked industrial output monthly through the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for decades. But services — which contribute more than half of India's Gross Value Added — had no equivalent. Quarterly GDP data was the only real signal, meaning a full quarter could pass before anyone knew if services were slowing down or speeding up. The ISP closes that gap: it's a monthly indicator, published on the 29th of every month with roughly a 60-day lag, functioning as the services-sector counterpart to the IIP.

How It's Built

The trial ISP uses 2024-25 as its base year and currently covers 19 sub-sectors — around 60% of the formal services economy. It doesn't rely on one survey; it draws from multiple sources. Administrative data powers indices for air transport, railways, banking and insurance, while GST data drives indices for trade, hospitality, telecommunications, IT services, real estate and professional services. Weights come from the Annual Survey of Incorporated Services Sector Enterprises (ASISSE), and the whole framework was developed under a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC-ISP) that included academia, industry bodies and government ministries.

What the First Numbers Showed

The inaugural release, covering April 2026, was strikingly strong: 14 of the 19 sub-sectors posted double-digit year-on-year growth. Accommodation and food services led at 37.2%, followed by retail trade (30.8%), administrative and support services (28.7%), and real estate (27.7%). Telecommunications, repair services, road transport and warehousing all posted solid double-digit gains too. Only two sub-sectors contracted — air transport (-13.9%) and railway transport (-0.4%).

What's Deliberately Excluded

The current index covers formal-sector enterprises only, based on what GST and administrative data can capture. That means it excludes largely government-run and non-market activity — public administration, defence, and crucially, health and education services, which are only slated to be added later, once ASISSE results for those sectors are available. This is a meaningful blind spot: education and health together touch a huge share of India's population, and neither is reflected in these growth numbers yet. There's also no composite overall ISP figure yet — MoSPI is deliberately holding that back until it's confident the trial series is stable.

Why This Matters Beyond Statistics Geeks

For policymakers, this is an early-warning system — a way to catch a services slowdown or a recovery months before quarterly GDP data would show it. For businesses and investors, it's a new lens on where formal-sector momentum actually sits, sub-sector by sub-sector, rather than relying on lagging indicators or anecdote. MoSPI has said it plans to expand coverage to 85–90% of the formal services sector — adding health, education and ownership of dwellings — before finally releasing a composite index. Until then, treat the ISP as a promising but partial picture: strong in what it measures, silent on large chunks of the economy it doesn't yet touch.