Data Note
Fiscal-year and calendar-year growth cover different quarters. An aligned sequence of output levels demonstrates how the same economic path can generate different annual growth rates without a disagreement about underlying production.
An annual growth label is incomplete without the months it covers. India's fiscal year runs from April through March, while a calendar-year measure covers January through December. Comparing the two can place different phases of the same economic path beside each other and produce an apparent ranking that disappears when the periods are aligned.
MoSPI's annual and quarterly GDP release for 2025–26 explicitly identifies April–June as the first quarter and January–March as the fourth quarter of the financial year. This note uses that calendar convention only. The output levels and growth rates in the following illustration are hypothetical.
Assume quarterly output is measured in compatible constant-price units. It is 100 in every quarter of 2024. In 2025 it is 100, 100, 110 and 110 across the four calendar quarters. Every quarter of 2026 is 110.
| Annual window | Quarters included | Output total |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar 2024 | January–December 2024 | 400 |
| Calendar 2025 | January–December 2025 | 420 |
| Fiscal 2024–25 | April 2024–March 2025 | 400 |
| Fiscal 2025–26 | April 2025–March 2026 | 430 |
Calendar-year 2025 growth is 420/400 − 1, or 5 percent. Fiscal-year 2025–26 growth is 430/400 − 1, or 7.5 percent. The difference arises entirely because the latter window replaces January–March 2025 output of 100 with January–March 2026 output of 110.
No observation has been revised and no quarter has been measured differently. Reporting the 7.5 percent fiscal-year rate beside another economy's 6 percent calendar-year rate would suggest faster growth on an unmatched basis. Using the same calendar year, the illustrative first economy grows by only 5 percent. The apparent ordering reverses.
In this example, calendar-year 2026 output totals 440, giving growth of approximately 4.76 percent over 2025. Yet output is unchanged at 110 throughout 2026. The annual increase reflects the comparison with the lower quarters in the preceding year, not fresh sequential expansion during 2026.
Fiscal and calendar windows allocate that inherited effect differently. A rise late in a calendar year can influence much of the next fiscal-year comparison. Explaining the annual number consequently requires the quarterly path, especially when activity has changed direction near the boundary between reporting years.
A calendar-year conversion cannot generally be obtained by averaging two fiscal-year growth rates. Annual growth depends on the underlying levels and their distribution across quarters. The same fiscal totals can be consistent with different calendar totals if the January–March components differ.
A defensible comparison aggregates the four relevant quarterly output levels for each economy, using compatible price, seasonal and vintage conventions. It then calculates the annual change from the aligned totals. Published quarterly levels may require careful handling if they are expressed at annual rates rather than as actual-quarter flows.
Price bases and revisions should also be consistent across the quarters being combined. A series break or a change in national-accounts methodology is not corrected merely by relabeling the year. The source and construction of a researcher-produced annual total should be stated alongside any difference from the official fiscal-year presentation.
Quarterly data used for a reconstructed year should also retain consistent seasonal adjustment and the same revision vintage. Adding newly revised quarters to older unrevised observations can introduce a second inconsistency even after the calendar has been aligned. Period matching and vintage matching are separate checks.
An international table can retain official fiscal-year rates where they serve a budget or domestic-policy question. It should label the period explicitly and avoid ranking them as if all rows referred to identical months. Aligning periods does not eliminate every difference between national accounts, but it removes a preventable mismatch before the economic comparison begins.