As many as 14 out of the 19 sub-sectors recorded double-digit growth in April 2026 as compared to April 2025 in the first sub-sectoral Trial Index of Services Production (ISP) with base year as 2024-25, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) said on Tuesday.
Nearly all the categories recorded positive growth during the month. These 19 sub-sectors cover about 60 per cent of the services sector, the official statement said.
Top sub-sectors reporting strong growth in April this year are Accommodation and Food (37.2 per cent), Retail Trade (30.8 per cent), Administrative and support services (28.7 per cent) and Real Estate (27.7 per cent).
The release of sub-sectoral ISPs will provide, for the first time, a monthly measure of short-term movements in India’s formal services sector, with a coverage of about 60 per cent. Overall ISP will be brought out later after studying stability and resilience of sub-sectoral ISPs and improved overall coverage of services, the statement said.
As part of the suite of macro-economic indicators, MoSPI is commencing release of the ISPs of 19 sub-sectors, with base year as 2024 -25. The first set of ISPs is being released for the month of April 2026. The ISP represents an important milestone in strengthening India’s statistical system and improving the measurement of the services sector, which accounts for more than half of the country’s economic activity.
The Technical Advisory Committee on Index of Services Production (TAC-ISP), constituted in May 2025, provided the conceptual and methodological guidance on compiling ISP. Apart from representatives from academia and the industry associations, membership of the TAC–ISP included representatives from the concerned Ministries and Departments dealing with the respective services sectors.
Based on its data sources, namely, GST and Administrative Data, ISP would cover the formal sector enterprises only. Accordingly, services which are not covered in ISP are those which are either related to core government activities or are dominated by non-market activities and the informal sector, the statement said.
The ISP adopts a differentiated approach to compilation of sub-sectoral ISPs based on the nature and availability of data sources. The three principal data sources are: Administrative/secondary data for ISP of Air Transport, Railway Transport, Water Transport (Freight), Banking and Insurance.
GST data is used for Wholesale Trade, Retail Trade, Repair and Maintenance, Accommodation and Food, Road Transport, Water Transport (Passenger), Warehousing and support activities for transportation, Postal and courier, Telecommunications, Information and Broadcasting, Real estate, IT and computer related services, Professional, scientific and technical services including R&D, Administrative and support services and Arts, Entertainment and Recreation.
At present, for compiling ISP, WPI is used as a deflator for wholesale trade and for other sub-sectors, either sub-sector specific CPI has been used or suitable proxy CPI (closest match for the sub-sector available) has been chosen. CPI–General has been used as a deflator for the sectors of Repair and Maintenance and Banking and Insurance. The sectors where such mapping is not available, CPI-Services has been used as a deflator, the statement explained.
The monthly ISPs are being published on an experimental basis. The publication of the Trial Series would enable MoSPI to examine data quality, test its resilience and also receive feedback from stakeholders and users, the statement added.
