Image for representation purpose only. file | Photo Credit: KK Mustafa
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, among other issues, and said efforts are underway to reduce the revisions. So that the EXIM numbers issued every month can be reduced. 99.99% accurate.
In six of the eight months between June 2022 and January 2023, India’s merchandise exports have been revised upwards by more than $2 billion from the quick estimates released by the commerce and industry ministry on the 15th. Next month’s In the same period, the number of merchandise imports has been revised by an average of $2.2 billion, of which the import bill has come down significantly in four months.
The scale of the export revision between November 2022 and January 2023 averaged about 10% of the $3.1 billion upgrade or period’s Quick Estimates. The highest export revision so far this year was recorded in December 2022 at $3.6 billion, while the import bill saw the biggest update in September, when it was slashed by $3.5 billion.
“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. Hindu, “For what we call quick estimates, complete data is yet to be received from all locations including remote locations. But we give estimates to see the trend.
“Amendments are made as and when based on what we receive from all the places. This is probably not unique to this year, and was there in earlier years as well. As we modernize our systems, get more and more digital data everywhere and then in that process try to reduce our effort. [revisions] as possible,” he explained.
Last year, the ministry stopped releasing preliminary trade estimates a month early because of sharp revisions in the quick estimates released a few weeks later.
“We thought we would not have revisions after that. We still have them and the transition is happening. By the 15th of every month, we should have relatively data indicating 99.99% trade. Whenever imports And there would be revisions in export transactions, so they would be small deviations,” he said, stressing that revisions were a routine part of statistical systems around. World.
Another official said the recent data revisions are being looked at only because of the scale of the changes – earlier revisions used to be some $100 million a month.
