The government on Thursday formed a committee, comprising officials from commerce and finance ministries, to create a robust mechanism for publishing consistent and accurate data following errors in gold import figures.
In a statement, the Commerce Ministry said that due to the migration of data transmission mechanism from SEZ (special economic zone) to ICEGATE (Indian Customs Electronic Gateway), figures of precious metals needed revision as double counting was noticed.
The double counting occurred because the system was calculating both imports into SEZ and subsequent clearance into DTA (domestic tariff area) as separate transactions after the migration.
"A committee has been formed with stakeholders from DGCIS (Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics), DG Systems (CBIC) and SEZs for the creation of a robust mechanism for publishing consistent data," it said.
The government has revised gold import data, bringing down numbers for November by $5 billion to $9.84 billion.
According to revised data of the commerce ministry arm Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), gold import numbers have been slashed since April 2024, revealing excess imports of about $11.7 billion during the first eight months of 2024-25.
The revision was prompted by an unusual surge in imports of the precious metal in November 2024, leading to a record import of $69.95 billion and the highest-ever trade deficit of $37.84 billion.
Noticing the jump, the commerce ministry started examining if there were any calculation or accounting mistakes in the compilation of the gold import data.
"The provisional Quick Estimates (QE) of EXIM data for the month of November 24 was released on 16th December 2024. On noticing an unusual surge in imports of precious metals, DGCI&S under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has jointly taken up a detailed examination with DG (Systems), CBIC," the statement said.
Kolkata-based DGCIS is an organisation for the collection, compilation and dissemination of India's trade statistics and commercial information.
DGCI&S receives trade data from over 500 locations and about 2.5 lakh transactions every day from different seaports, land ports, airports and inland container depots.
The EXIM (export-import) data from more than 100 SEZs was earlier captured by the SEZ online system, and the data for all other ports (i.e. non-SEZ locations) was captured by the ICEGATE system.
Both systems (ICEGATE and SEZ Online) were transmitting the data separately to DGCIS for publishing foreign trade statistics.
Meanwhile, based on a decision to shift EXIM declarations from SEZ online to the ICEGATE system, the data pertaining to SEZs and all other ports is being captured and transmitted by ICEGATE to DGCIS.
"However, owing to the persistence of certain technical glitches, the migration is still not complete. Both SEZ Online and ICEGATE are still capturing and transmitting mutually exclusive EXIM data to DGCIS," it added.
The ministry explained that the DGCIS does revision and correction of data from time to time, and the revision is based on data that are received late, amendments in the respective months and qualitative corrections wherever required.
"The principal commodity level data, which have been uploaded recently at DGCIS Data Dissemination Portal, incorporates the first phase of reconciliations made to date. Revision has been done for trade figures from April 2024 to November 2024, which are made public in compliance to the regular publication cycle maintained as per international standard data dissemination norms," it said.
It added that internationally, revision and corrections are an inherent part of any statistical procedure.
The quick estimate values, released by the ministry, are initial estimates and are often systematically amended to reflect more accurate information.
"Worldwide, official statistics are released and are subject to subsequent corrections and revisions as per available updated and additional information," the ministry said, adding that as a statistical system, the main objective is to maintain a balance between data quality, accuracy and timeliness.
Apart from this, the fixed revisions and unscheduled corrections are also obligations of the statistical system as and when more data are available, it said.
Commenting on the ministry's statement, think tank GTRI said if DGCIS is currently receiving SEZ import data from both ICEGATE and SEZ online system and there are issues with SEZ data received through ICEGATE as mentioned in the press note, it would have been appropriate for the directorate to cross-check the two data-sets before generating quick estimates.
"As a matter of practice transactions reporting import from SEZ to DTA are identified during preliminary checking and excluded before processing. It seems the process has not been properly followed," the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said.
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