Tech glitch in data transmission led to inflated gold, silver import data: Government

New Delhi: The government has setup a committee to create a mechanism for publishing consistent export-import data even as multiple official portals continue to capture trade data, the commerce and industry ministry said Thursday, a day after its data collection arm steeply revised downwards the gold and silver imports for April-November FY25. Transmission of data from the special economic zone (SEZ) portal to the Indian Customs Electronic Gateway (Icegate) may have led to calculation errors.

“A committee has been formed with stakeholders from DGCIS, DG Systems (CBIC) and SEZs for creation of a robust mechanism for publishing consistent data,” it said in a statement, citing “persistence of certain technical glitches”.

The Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), an arm of the ministry, is responsible for the collection, compilation and dissemination of India’s trade statistics and commercial information.

The provisional Quick Estimates (QE) of trade data for November was released on December 15, 2024.

On noticing “unusual surge” in imports of precious metals, DGCIS jointly conducted a reconciliation exercise with DG (Systems), CBIC.

The revision revealed excess gold imports of about $11.7 billion in April-November FY25. The cumulative gold imports during the first eight months of FY25 are $37.38 billion, as against the earlier estimate of $49.08 billion. Similarly, silver imports data for April-November were revised downwards to $2.33 billion, from $3.27 billion earlier.

“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.

As per the statement, it was observed that due to migration of data transmission mechanism from SEZ to ICEGATE, figures of precious metals needed revision as the system was “calculating both imports into SEZ and subsequent clearance into DTA as separate transactions after the migration”. DTA or direct tariff area are outside the SEZs.

“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,” the ministry said.

The ministry explained that internationally, revision and corrections are an inherent part of any statistical procedure and the QE values are initial estimates and are often systematically amended to reflect more accurate information.

Electronics imports data revised
India’s electronics imports for April to November 2024 were revised down to $61.2 billion from $63.9 billion, a reduction of $2.7 billion, think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said.

It also said that gold imports from the UAE reduced $3.65 billion to $7.98 billion from the earlier estimate of $11.63 billion in April-October FY25 while those from Switzerland were revised downwards by $1 billion to $8.45 billion from $9.45 billion,

Similarly, import data of the yellow metal from South Africa, Australia and Hong Kong were also revised downwards.