The expert committee set up by the Union government to review the National Statistical Office’s (NSO’s) consumer expenditure survey had not recommended junking the report, sources privy to the development said.

Consumer spending fell for the first time in over four decades by 3.7 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to the NSO’s survey

The committee, which was set up under the erstwhile National Sample Survey Office director general and National Statistical Commission (NSC) member G C Manna, did not flag “data quality” issues in the 2017-18 survey report. The committee had members from the NSO and the Central Statistical Office divisions of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.