Thirteen of 19 sub-services sectors clocked double-digit growth in August 2026, a Statistics Ministry index showed. Retail trade, real estate, and repair services performed well during the month. While the overall services sector grew by 14 percent, air transport and arts services fell. Experts said this shows strong domestic demand.
Retail trading, real estate and repair performed well in August, a service index released by the Statistics Ministry showed. These three are among 13 out of the 19 service sub-sectors that recorded double-digit growth in the month under consideration.
"Top sub-sectors reporting strong growth in August 2026 were retail trade (19.9 per cent), real estate (17.6 per cent), repair services (17.6 per cent), insurance (16.5 per cent) and banking (14.9 per cent)," MoSPI said. The two sub-sectors which were negative during August were 'air transport' and 'arts, entertainment and recreation services'.
"The publication of Trial Series would enable MoSPI to examine data quality, test its resilience and also receive feedback from stakeholders and users," the release said. The Indices of railways, banking and insurance subsectors, are based on provisional monthly data and would undergo revision on an annual basis, it added.
Robust growth
"The Index of Services production covering 19 major services for the month of August 2026 shows a year-on-year growth of 14 per cent, thereby confirming a robust growth momentum," said D K Srivastava, Chief Policy Advisor, EY India. An upward growth momentum of double digits is shown by the ISP since June 2026, with an average growth of 13.6 per cent during the three months till August 2026. "Given the weight of services sector in overall GDP, these trends indicate the potential of a healthy GDP growth for the second quarter of 2026-27. This is also confirmed by the second quarter IIP growth, which averaged 7.3 per cent," Srivastava said.
Pranjal Ghate, Economist at Brickwork Ratings, also felt that there is strong momentum in the services sector. Retail trade led the expansion, likely supported by improving consumer demand ahead of the festive season. Meanwhile, strong growth in real estate, repair services, and banking points to resilient domestic activity. The two sectors that contracted were air transport, arts and recreation.
"The air transport decline probably occurred due to higher airfares caused by elevated fuel prices from the West Asia crisis, and DGCA's passenger traffic data supports this claim," Ghate said. Overall, the figures point to resilient domestic demand supporting services activity, and as a newly introduced experimental series, the ISP is a welcome addition to India's statistical framework, he concluded.