The Commerce Ministry has attributed the sharp revisions in foreign trade data over the past year to challenges in getting timely data from all ports of entry, along with other issues, and said efforts are underway to minimise revisions so that the exim numbers released every month are 99.99% accurate.
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In six of the eight months between June 2022 and January 2023, India’s goods exports have been revised upwards by more than $2 billion from the quick estimates released by the Commerce and Industry Ministry on the 15th of the subsequent month. Over the same period, merchandise imports numbers have been revised by an average of $2.2 billion , with the import bill lowered significantly in four of those months.
The scale of export revisions shot up between November 2022 and January 2023, averaging an upgrade of $3.1 billion or almost 10% of the quick estimates for the period. The highest export revision so far this year was recorded for December 2022 at $3.6 billion, while the import bill saw the biggest update in September when it was pared by $3.5 billion.
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“There are challenges with how we crunch the data, when it is available and what sources are available,” a senior ministry official said in response to a query from The Hindu. “For what we call the quick estimates, the full data from all locations, including remote locations is not received yet. But we give the estimates to see the trends,” the official added.
“As and when we receive from all locations, there are revisions done based on those. This is perhaps not unique to this year, and was there in earlier years as well. As we modernise our systems, have greater digital data captured everywhere and then, in that process, our endeavour is to try and reduce [revisions] as much as possible,” he explained.
Last year, the ministry had stopped releasing preliminary trade estimates early in a month as there were sharp revisions in the quick estimates released a couple of weeks later.
“We thought we will not have revisions after that. We are still having them and the transition is happening. By 15th of every month, we should have relatively data indicating 99.99% of the trade.. those small aberrations will be there whenever amendments happen to import and export transactions,” he noted, stressing that revisions were a routine part of statistical systems around the world.
Another official said that recent data revisions were only being noticed because of the scale of changes — earlier revisions used to be a few $100 million for a month.