NEW DELHI: The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) on Wednesday rejected the claims of former CEA Arvind Subramanian regarding over-estimation of GDP numbers and said that India's current methodology is at par with its global standing as a responsible, transparent and well-managed economy.The EAC-PM released a detailed note titled 'GDP estimation in India - Perspectives and Facts' and as it earlier stated, the note apparently gives a point-to-point rebuttal to a recently published paper titled ‘India’s GDP Mis-estimation: Likelihood, Magnitudes, Mechanisms, and Implications’ by Subramanian.Subramanian, in a paper, stated that India's economic growth rate has been overestimated by around 2.5 percentage points between 2011-12 and 2016-17 due to a change in methodology for calculating GDP.Countering this, the note circulated by government think-tank Niti Aayog stated that "it provides a clear rationale for India’s switch to an improved GDP estimation methodology in January 2015. The new methodology that uses 2011-12 as the base year includes two major improvements, a) Incorporation of MCA21 database, and b) Incorporation of the Recommendations of System of National Accounts (SNA), 2008. This change was in line with other countries that have changed their methodologies in line with SNA 2008 and revised their respective GDP figures. On an average, real GDP estimates saw an increase of 0.7% among OECD countries."The primary contributors to the note, namely Bibek Debroy, Rathin Roy, Surjit Bhalla, Charan Singh and Arvind Virmani reject Subramanian’s methodology, arguments and conclusions on the basis of academic merit and grasp of Indian realities, it added.The release also mentioned that it "indicates that Subramanian has cherry-picked a few indicators and performed a rather unconvincing regression analysis to prove his hypothesis that India’s GDP was over-estimated post 2011-12. For instance, the note highlights the absurdity in Subramanian’s paper that selectively ignores tax data based on the argument that the period post 2011-12 witnessed 'major changes in direct and indirect taxes'. Interestingly, Subramanian’s analysis ends on March 31, 2017, while the only major tax change (GST) was introduced on July 1, 2017."The note concluded with the point that "India’s GDP estimation methodology is by no means a perfect exercise and the ministry of statistics and program implementation is working on multiple aspects to improve the accuracy. However, the direction and pace of improvement is commendable and as of today the methodology is at par with its global standing."