Almost everything a statistics office publishes is about the past. The national accounts tell you what was produced last quarter. The Annual Survey of Industries describes a financial year that ended eighteen months ago. Even the monthly indices report a month already gone.
There is one thing a statistician can do that an accountant cannot, and it is to ask firms what they intend to do next.
On 1 October 2026, the National Statistics Office (NSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation began fieldwork on the Forward-Looking Survey on Private Corporate Sector CAPEX Investment Intentions (CAPEX 2026), running October to December 2026.
What it asks, and why that is unusual
The survey collects three things from each enterprise:
- Capital expenditure actually undertaken in recent financial years.
- Provisional capital expenditure in the current financial year.
- Investment intentions for the forthcoming financial year.
Alongside these it collects the composition of that spending — across asset groups and industries — and, more interestingly, the reasoning behind it: investment strategy, objectives, and sources of financing.
That third item is what makes the survey unusual, and it is also what makes it fragile. An intention is not a transaction. A firm that tells a surveyor in November 2026 that it plans to spend ₹500 crore in 2027-28 may spend more, less or nothing at all, depending on demand, interest rates and events nobody has forecast. The survey is therefore not a measurement in the sense that the ASI is a measurement. It is a sentiment and plan indicator, and it has to be read as one.
Read correctly, though, it answers a question no backward-looking statistic can. India's growth problem for the better part of a decade has been that private corporate investment has lagged — public capital expenditure and household construction have done the heavy lifting, while private firms have been slower to commit. Whether that is changing is the single most consequential question in Indian macroeconomics, and by the time the national accounts tell you, the cycle has already turned. A survey of intentions tells you earlier, less precisely.
The machinery
Who conducts it: the NSO, under MoSPI.
Legal basis: the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008. This matters more than it looks. The Act gives the government power to require statistical returns and imposes penalties for refusal or false information, while also protecting the confidentiality of individual returns — information collected cannot be disclosed in a form that identifies the respondent, and cannot be used as evidence against them. A survey that asks a company to disclose its forward investment plans is asking for commercially sensitive information, and the confidentiality guarantee is the reason firms answer.
The frame: built from active enterprises registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, subject to prescribed eligibility and turnover criteria. The survey covers selected large private corporate enterprises — not a census, and explicitly not small firms. This is a deliberate choice: large firms account for the bulk of corporate capital formation and can actually answer a question about next year's plans, because they have a capital budget. A small enterprise typically does not.
Collection method: a dedicated secure web portal on which enterprises self-compile and submit returns, with an instruction manual and a video guide for navigation and self-reporting. Self-enumeration rather than an enumerator visit is the right design for a respondent that is a finance department rather than a household.
Note what the frame excludes: the unincorporated sector, which is measured separately by ASUSE, and the public sector, whose capital expenditure appears in the budget documents. This survey is about private corporate investment specifically — the component that has been missing.
What the first round found
The inaugural survey, CAPEX 2024, was conducted between November 2024 and January 2025 — the first exercise of its kind in India.
Its headline finding for 2024-25 was the sectoral composition of aggregate capital expenditure:
| Principal activity | Share of aggregate capex |
|---|---|
| Manufacturing | 43.80% |
| Information and communication | 15.60% |
| Transportation and storage | 14.00% |
Those three categories together account for roughly 73% of private corporate capital expenditure, and the ranking repays a moment's thought.
Manufacturing at 43.80% is the reassuring number, and it sits oddly beside the fact that manufacturing's share of GDP has not moved in twelve years. Both can be true: manufacturing can absorb the largest share of new capital while growing no faster than the economy as a whole, because manufacturing is capital-intensive. Capital expenditure shares tell you where money is going; GDP shares tell you where output is. A capital-intensive sector will always look larger in the first than in the second.
Information and communication at 15.60% is high by the standards of most economies and reflects a genuine Indian specialisation, plus the heavy fixed investment that data centres and telecom networks require.
Transportation and storage at 14.00% is the number most worth watching over successive rounds, because it is the most cyclical. Private investment in logistics is a bet on future freight volumes, and it moves early.
How to use this series
Three cautions, and one reason to pay attention.
It is new. With two rounds conducted, there is no time series worth the name. The value of an intentions survey comes almost entirely from tracking the same question across years — whether intentions are rising or falling, and whether last year's intentions were realised. Neither comparison is yet available with any depth.
Intentions are not outcomes. The right use of the series, once it has a few rounds, is to compare stated intention against subsequent actual capex, and to learn the bias. Firms in most countries systematically over-state planned investment in good times and under-state it in bad. Until India's bias is known, the level is less informative than the direction.
Coverage is partial by design. Large private corporates only. Any statement about "Indian investment" drawn from this survey alone is overreaching.
And the reason to pay attention: this is the only official Indian statistic that is forward-looking by construction. Every other number in the system describes something that has already happened. If private capital expenditure is going to turn, this is where it will show up first — and that is worth a question in any paper that takes economic statistics seriously.
🔑 Revision block
- CAPEX 2026 — Forward-Looking Survey on Private Corporate Sector CAPEX Investment Intentions, fieldwork October to December 2026, announced 1 October 2026.
- Conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
- Legal basis: Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 — empowers compulsory returns and penalises false information, while protecting confidentiality of individual returns.
- Frame: active enterprises registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), subject to eligibility and turnover criteria. Covers selected large private corporate enterprises only.
- Collects three things: capex undertaken in recent years; provisional capex in the current year; investment intentions for the forthcoming year — plus asset groups, industries, investment strategy, objectives and sources of financing.
- Method: dedicated secure web portal, with enterprises self-compiling and submitting; instruction manual and video guide provided.
- Inaugural round: CAPEX 2024, conducted November 2024 to January 2025 — the first such survey in India.
- CAPEX 2024 findings for 2024-25: manufacturing 43.80%, information and communication 15.60%, transportation and storage 14.00% of aggregate capital expenditure — about 73% between them.
- Why it matters: it is the only forward-looking official Indian statistic; private corporate investment has been the lagging component of Indian growth.
- Key limitation: an intention is not a transaction — the survey is a plan and sentiment indicator, not a measurement.
- Excludes the unincorporated sector (covered by ASUSE) and the public sector (whose capex appears in budget documents).
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The Forward-Looking Survey on Private Corporate Sector CAPEX Investment Intentions is conducted by the: (a) Reserve Bank of India (b) National Statistics Office under MoSPI (c) Ministry of Corporate Affairs (d) NITI Aayog
→ (b) The NSO under MoSPI conducts it. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs supplies the registration data from which the frame is built, which is the distinction option (c) exploits.
Q2. The survey is conducted under the provisions of the: (a) Companies Act, 2013 (b) Right to Information Act, 2005 (c) Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951 (d) Collection of Statistics Act, 2008
→ (d) The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 provides the legal basis. It both compels returns and guarantees the confidentiality of individual responses — the latter being why firms are willing to disclose forward investment plans.
Q3. Which of the following does the CAPEX survey uniquely collect, as compared with other official Indian statistics? (a) Investment intentions for the forthcoming financial year (b) Capital expenditure undertaken in past financial years (c) Employment by industry group (d) Gross Value Added by state
→ (a) Its distinguishing feature is forward-looking data — stated intentions for the coming year. Past capital expenditure and employment data are available from other sources; none of them asks about the future.
Q4. In CAPEX 2024, the largest share of aggregate private corporate capital expenditure in 2024-25 was accounted for by: (a) Transportation and storage (b) Information and communication (c) Manufacturing (d) Electricity, gas and water supply
→ (c) Manufacturing, at 43.80%, followed by information and communication (15.60%) and transportation and storage (14.00%).
Q5. Manufacturing can account for the largest share of capital expenditure while its share of GDP remains flat because: (a) Capital expenditure is measured in nominal terms and GDP in real terms (b) Manufacturing output is excluded from GDP calculations (c) Capital expenditure data cover only the public sector (d) Manufacturing is capital-intensive, so it absorbs more capital per unit of output
→ (d) A capital-intensive sector will always loom larger in capital expenditure shares than in output shares. The two statistics measure different things and are not in conflict.
Q6. The sampling frame for the survey is constructed from: (a) GST registrations (b) Active enterprises registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, subject to turnover criteria (c) Factories registered under the Factories Act, 1948 (d) The Economic Census listing of establishments
→ (b) The frame uses MCA-registered active enterprises with prescribed eligibility and turnover criteria. The Factories Act frame belongs to the Annual Survey of Industries, which is the distractor at option (c).
Q7. The principal methodological limitation of an investment intentions survey is that: (a) It cannot be conducted online (b) It excludes the manufacturing sector (c) Stated intentions need not translate into actual expenditure (d) It is prohibited from collecting data on financing sources
→ (c) An intention is not a transaction. The survey is a plan and sentiment indicator, and its value lies in tracking direction and in eventually learning the systematic bias between stated and realised investment.
Q8. Which sector's capital expenditure, among those reported, would be expected to be the most cyclical and therefore the most useful early signal? (a) Transportation and storage (b) Education (c) Public administration (d) Agriculture
→ (a) Private investment in logistics and storage is a bet on future freight volumes and tends to move early in the cycle. Public administration is not in the private corporate frame at all.
Q9. The CAPEX survey's coverage is best described as: (a) A census of all registered companies in India (b) All enterprises employing ten or more workers (c) The unincorporated sector enterprises below the Factories Act thresholds (d) Selected large private corporate sector enterprises
→ (d) It covers selected large private corporate enterprises — not a census, and not small or unincorporated firms. Those fall to ASUSE, while public sector capex appears in budget documents.
Q10. Data under the survey are collected through: (a) Personal interviews by enumerators at enterprise premises (b) A dedicated secure web portal on which enterprises self-compile and submit returns (c) Mandatory filings annexed to the annual return under the Companies Act (d) Telephone interviews conducted by the Reserve Bank of India
→ (b) Enterprises self-report through a secure portal, supported by an instruction manual and a video guide. Self-enumeration suits a respondent that is a corporate finance department rather than a household.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Economic statistics have become one of the most reliable scoring areas in CDS, and they are asked in four ways.
The first is who conducts what. MoSPI through the NSO runs the ASI, ASUSE, PLFS, IIP, ISP and now the CAPEX survey. The RBI maintains the KLEMS database and its own enterprise surveys. The Labour Bureau has separate series. The commonest error is attributing an MoSPI survey to the RBI or vice versa.
The second is legal basis, which candidates routinely skip and papers increasingly ask. The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 underpins official statistical collection; the Census is conducted under the Census Act, 1948. Those are two different statutes for two different exercises.
The third is what each survey covers, and this release makes the point sharply. Registered factories go to ASI; unincorporated enterprises to ASUSE; large private corporates to the CAPEX survey; households to the PLFS. A question naming a population and asking which instrument measures it is close to certain.
The fourth is backward- versus forward-looking indicators, a distinction that is newly examinable because India now has an example of the latter. Leading indicators, lagging indicators and coincident indicators are standard economics vocabulary, and the CAPEX survey is the obvious Indian illustration of a leading indicator built by a statistics office rather than inferred from markets.
Preparing for CDS/OTA? Build a single table of India's statistical instruments — conducting body, population covered, frequency, and whether it looks backwards or forwards. One table answers most of what this section asks. Build the base with our CDS/OTA economy notes, follow the daily CDS current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Aditya Tiwari — Economy and international relations faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.