PIB TrackerAir transport is the only service sector below its own base year
India now has a monthly production index for services. In its July reading, eighteen of nineteen sub-sectors are above 100 and air transport is at 87.8 - down a quarter from January.
What happened
- MoSPI released the Index of Services Production for July 2026 across 19 sub-sectors, base year 2024-25.
- Fastest: administrative and support services +20.9%, retail trade +18.5%, real estate +14.4%, banking +12.3%.
- Contracting: repair services -5.0% and air transport -8.4%.
- Air transport's index is 87.8 - the only one of nineteen below the base of 100, against accommodation and food at 144.0.
- The series is published on an experimental basis as a Trial Series to test data quality and gather user feedback.
For Prelims
- Index of Services Production: a monthly volume index for services, base 2024-25=100, covering 19 sub-sectors. The IIP measures only industry, so until now the majority of India's economy had no monthly production measure at all.
- Trial Series: published on an experimental basis to examine data quality, test resilience and collect user feedback. It is not yet an official statistic, which is why it is called a trial.
- Provisional sub-sectors: railways, banking and insurance rest on provisional monthly data and are revised annually - so three of nineteen carry a known revision risk.
- Reading an index against its base: a value below 100 means output is below the base year. Only air transport (87.8) is there; the next lowest are railway transport 106.1 and arts and entertainment 107.0.
- The March effect: almost every sub-sector spikes in March 2026 - the end of the financial year, when billing, settlement and procurement concentrate. It is the clearest seasonality in the series.
- Volume, not value: like the IIP, this is a production index, so it measures how much service was delivered, not what it earned. Price and margin changes are invisible in it.
- Why it matters for GDP: services are the largest share of Indian output, and a monthly indicator lets quarterly GDP be nowcast rather than waited for.
- Sister release: the IIP for August 2026 came out on 28 September at 8.0 per cent. Industry and services are now both measured monthly, on different base years - 2022-23 for the IIP and 2024-25 for the ISP.
For UPSC: A new statistical instrument is worth more in an answer than a month of growth figures. Use the ISP on data infrastructure and measurement of the services economy, on the gap between what India measures monthly and what actually produces its output, and on air transport wherever aviation capacity is the question - the index is the hardest available evidence on how the sector is actually performing.
What it is NOT: No aggregate services index is published - only nineteen separate sub-sectors, so there is no headline services growth number to place against the IIP. No weights are given, so the sub-sectors cannot be combined by a reader either. No explanation is offered for the air transport contraction, which is the most striking figure in the table. No employment, price or capacity data accompanies any sub-sector. And there is no statement of when the trial series will become an official statistic, or what test it has to pass first.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.1 · GS3.9 · Linkage L1
Anchor
Of the nineteen service sub-sectors MoSPI now measures monthly, eighteen are above their 2024-25 base. Air transport is at 87.8. It is the only sub-sector below 100, the only one contracting by more than five per cent, and on the monthly series it has fallen from a peak of 117.3 in January 2026 - a drop of about a quarter in six months. The release offers no explanation.
Substantiation (data)
The rest of the table is strong. Administrative and support services grew 20.9 per cent, retail trade 18.5, real estate 14.4, accommodation and food 12.6, banking 12.3 and wholesale trade 12.1. Telecommunications, IT, professional services and information and broadcasting all grew around 10 per cent. On index levels, accommodation and food stands at 144.0 and retail trade at 140.0. Only repair services, at minus 5.0 per cent, joins air transport in contraction.
Position
The instrument matters more than this month's numbers. India has measured industrial production monthly since the 1950s and services - the larger part of its economy - not at all, which meant every monthly read on growth was a read on the smaller half. A services production index, even an experimental one, closes the most consequential gap in Indian high-frequency statistics, and MoSPI publishing it as an explicit trial with a stated feedback purpose is the right way to introduce one.
Counterpoint
It is not yet usable as a headline. There is no aggregate index and no published weights, so nineteen sub-sector numbers cannot be combined into a services growth rate by MoSPI or by anyone else. Three sub-sectors - railways, banking and insurance - rest on provisional data revised annually. And the March 2026 column, where repair services hit 187.4 and insurance 168.1, shows a financial-year-end distortion running through the whole series that no seasonal adjustment has yet been applied to.
Problematisation
The air transport figure sits oddly beside the day's other aviation news. On the same afternoon, the Civil Aviation Minister launched Routes Asia 2027 with the line that there is room for more capacity, more airlines and more routes, citing 166 airports and 100 more planned. The statistics ministry's own index says the sector's output is below where it was in 2024-25 and falling. Both may be true - capacity plans are decade-long and an index is a month - but only one of them is a measurement.
Conclusion
Track two things as this series matures: whether MoSPI publishes weights and an aggregate, and whether air transport recovers past 100. The first decides if the index becomes a usable indicator; the second decides whether one month's outlier was a signal.
Deploys into: Measuring the services economy · High-frequency statistics and nowcasting · Aviation capacity against aviation output · Experimental statistics and revision risk
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation · 2026-09-29 · PRID 2316489 · PIB source ↗