What is going on in East Asia’s big economies.
The world is currently seeing slowing growth and growing worries about the global economy, but what about Asia's giant emerging economies of India and China? Could they provide some comfort to the world?
If looking at the latest GDP numbers from the two countries things are looking positive. Beijing says its economy grew by a respectable 6.7% in the first three months of 2016, while New Delhi reported a remarkable 7.9% expansion in the same period.
But not all is gold, both countries have saw raising doubts over the quality of their data, leading scores of reputable economists to cast aside official measures and turn to alternative gauges instead.
This is a big deal, together, India and China account for 16% of world GDP, or about $13 trillion. They are standing against what the World Bank described Wednesday as "insipid" global growth of 2.4% in its latest outlook.
For India, the doubts began to rise in January 2015 when the country's statistics bureau changed the way it calculates the size of the economy. Overnight, the pace of growth went from mediocre to very-high.
Critics of the statistics said that the new GDP numbers lack credibility because they diverge so dramatically from indicators such as industrial production, investment spending and exports.
While India's government statisticians openly engaging with their critics in Beijing there has been mostly silence in the face of tough questioning.
Some economists argue that China's data is far too good, and almost never deviate from the Communist Party's targets. There are also concerns over a lack of independence at the country's statistics agency.
The doubters often turn to proxy measures to gauge the health of China's economy. They look at electricity output, freight shipments and seaport cargo volumes. These indicators suggest that the economy is growing by 4% to 5%. That's fair enough - even Prime Minister Li Keqiang has described official economic data as "unreliable."
When Li was a provincial official in 2007, he told the U.S. ambassador that official GDP statistics were "man-made" and should be used for "reference only."
It seems that the two economies are growing and providing some good news to the global economy, but maybe the data from the countries should not be taken for granted and used only has a general direction of the way Asia is going.
