The Indian government is quite interested in your online spending habits. In fact, it is interested enough that government surveys that will seek to analyze your spending habits and exactly how you decide to divide money while purchasing stuff online, will begin next month. The survey will deal with the spending patterns of the India populace, while they are conducting transactions over e-commerce.
The consumer expenditure survey is slated to kick off next month. The survey will continue until June, next year. It is being carried out by the by the National Sample Survey Organisation, which comes under the awning of the statistics ministry.
So, this survey is an annual exercise. However, it did not reckon the country’s e-commerce spendings — until now. Well, the powers that be now feel that the country’s e-commerce sector has grown enough to merit a niche in the survey. Government data managers are now finding ways to incorporate online spendings into the survey as well.
True, the e-commerce sector is pretty insignificant when compared to the retail market. I mean, you would be looking at around $14.5 Billion as compared to the country’s total retail spending which stands well over $750 Billion. However, e-commerce spending is only going up as Internet penetration in the country rises.
If you need some more statistics to convince you that India’s online market is slated to grow, consider this: In the Asia Pacific region, somewhere around one fifth of the total retail sale will take place online, as early as 2021. And guess which is the fastest growing market? Well, India of course. Indeed, the country is the fastest growing retail market in the whole world!
So, it stands to reason that the government would be interested in this data. The national expenditure survey will cover as many a 1.2 lakh households and will source its data from 1.2 lakh households spread across 5,000 urban blocks and 7,000 villages.
The data will help the government co-relate online spendings and inflation. It could also use the data to predict stuff and gauge the habits of the demographics. This data could prove to be priceless in the future, once Internet penetration ensures that more people get on the e-commerce bandwagon.
