NEW DELHI: An embarrassed government is likely to lower exports numbers for 2010-11 as part of a clean-up drive, following a $9.7-billion over-estimation of shipments in the first seven months of the current fiscal.
A senior government official said there may be an error in the estimates of last year, particularly the fourth quarter, as a new computer software had been installed during that period.
"The data for some months in the previous financial year would need to be revised. The exact figure has not been computed yet," said this official, who is privy to the deliberations on trade data revision.
According to current figures, India's exports grew by 37.5% to $245.9 billion in 2010-11, and a lowering of numbers will result in a decline in the growth rate for that year.
"The only silver lining is that any downward revision in previous fiscal's numbers would bump up export growth for this year," said the official quoted above.
But experts are clearly not amused by the data flip-flop. "It is quite alarming... Policy responses have become sensitive to data. We cannot afford to have changes of this order in critical numbers. More attention needs to be paid on quality of data," said Abheek Barua, chief economist, HDFC Bank.
Director General of Foreign Trade Anup Pujari, who along with Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu, chief statistician TCA Anant and other officials has been examining the data collection process, however, sought to play down the possibility of a revision for 2010-11.
"We are rechecking all figures in Q4 when the new software was implemented by the Customs... the likelihood of discrepancy is remote. We have not got anything yet," said Pujari.
The revision in the figures for April-October 2011, which undermined the credibility of official data, had caused export growth to fall from 46% to 39% during the period.
The Centre had blamed software glitches, wrong data entry and double accounting for the errors.
Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com