December 10, 2011 – New Delhi : In a major blow to the credibility of Indian government and top bureaucratic community, on Friday government has admitted to a data error in its report on the export data during April-October is in excess by as much as $9.4 billion, resulting in a margin of error of 4-5 per cent. The issue is seen as very serious in the backdrop of various analyst questioning the Industrial Production Number (IIP) and other statastics published by government.
Computer Crash
Commerce Secretary, Dr Rahul Khullar, told reporters that computer software (Icegate) that is being used to transfer data electronically had crashed for some time and was upgraded later, leading to problems in data entry. Analyst are still not convinced about such a weak defence put forward by top bureaucrat. How it took more than 6 months to locate such an over estimation.
Unreliable and Non Supportive Data
Recently Kotak Securities had come out with a research report where it clearly explained about the export data is not being tallied with other economic variables and such a report is now followed by such a data error admission by goverrment. The data released by ministry’s Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) is being tracked very closely by market participants and it is very sad to have such a flow in data.
