Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said there was need to ensure credibility in government data, while adding that the government holds back data only in cases of issues in reports from surveys on the ground.

“We need to assure people who need the data and lots of people need the data... Even the government needs its own data. But the fact is when sometimes something genuine has gone wrong in the ground, and therefore, survey results have been held back," she said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2019 in New Delhi.

The government is fairly seized of the ongoing debate about data and its credibility, the minister added.

Sitharaman’s comments follow a leaked National Statistics Office report on consumer spending, published in newspaper Business Standard, which was debunked by the government.

Watch video: #HTLS2019: ‘Need to bring back credibility into data’: Nirmala Sitharaman