Computer, human goof-ups overstated export figures by almost $9 bn: Govt

ET Bureau Dec 10, 2011, 07.42am IST

• 

NEW DELHI: Computer and human errors have overstated India's export figures by almost $9 billion, the government said on Friday. This confirms fears about the robustness of the country's export performance and adds to the vulnerability of the rupee.
Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar said exports for the first seven months of the fiscal would now need to be restated down by $9 billion to $170.8 billion, a calculation error he said occurred due to a system crash in the DGCI&S and mistakes in classification and data entry by officials.

"Mistakes take place. Every number for the last seven months was revised. This notion that the government is deliberately cooking up and telling you lies has got to stop," Khullar said at a press conference on Friday.
While the downward revision will mean a small, low single-digit knock to the country's overall export numbers, originally estimated to end the year at around $300 billion, it would magnify an already precarious current account deficit with trade deficit estimated to touch $160 billion in the fiscal. "It is not that we had a balance of payments crisis on hand and did not know it. It is just that the deficit is slightly worse than we estimated," Khullar said.
Export growth in November decelerated sharply to 3.7% to $22.3 billion while imports increased 22.5% to $35.9 billion. Cumulatively, exports in April-November posted a 33.2% growth to $192.7billion while imports grew 30.2% to $309.5 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $116.8 billion.
What is embarrassing for the government is the huge overestimation of exports to the tune of $15 billion for engineering goods and underestimation of $12 billion in case of gems & jewellery and petroleum products in the April-October period.
The revision will further undermine the credibility of India's economic statistics that many experts have come to disregard. "We estimate export figures based on the amount that other countries have imported," said Jahangir Aziz, Asia economist, JP Morgan.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-12-10/news/30502235_1_export-figures-export-growth-trade-deficit