The commerce and industry ministry on Thursday said that the overestimation of gold import figures between April to November was a result of an error that took place due to migration of data transmission mechanisms and subsequent double counting of imports coming into special economic zones (considered foreign territory) and clearance to domestic zones.
The explanation comes a day after the ministry revised the gold import figures for November lower by $5 billion to $9.9 billion from $14.8 billion narrowing the overall goods trade deficit for the month to $33 billion from $38 billion. The Indian Express on December 24 reported that the transition had caused the counting error.
“It was observed that due to migration of data transmission mechanism from Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to Indian Customs Electronic Gateway (ICEGATE), figures of precious metals needed revision as it was noticed as the system was calculating both imports into SEZ and subsequent clearance into Domestic Tariff Area (DTA) as separate transactions after the migration,” the ministry said.
The ministry said that DGCI&S receives trade data from over 500 locations and about 2.5 lakh transactions every day from different sea ports, land ports, airport and inland container depots and trade data from more than 100 SEZs was earlier captured by SEZ Online System and EXIM data for all other ports was captured by ICEGATE system.
“Both systems ICEGATE and SEZ online were transmitting the trade data separately to DGCIS for publishing foreign trade statistics. However, based on a decision to shift EXIM declarations from SEZ Online to ICEGATE system, the EXIM data pertaining to SEZs as well as all other ports is being captured and transmitted by ICEGATE to DGCIS,” the ministry said.
“However, owing to 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.
It further said that DGCIS does revision and correction of data from time to time and that revision is based on data that’s 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 till 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,” the ministry said.
The revised data can be accessed through the Data Dissemination Portal of DGCIS. A committee has been formed with stakeholders from DGCIS, DG Systems (CBIC) and SEZs for creation of a robust mechanism for publishing consistent data, the ministry added.
Stay informed with access to our award-winning journalism.
Avoid misinformation with trusted, accurate reporting.
Make smarter decisions with insights that matter.
