Govt acknowledges it miscalculated gold import data

The government this week acknowledged that it miscalculated import figures for precious metals, and revised the data after noting the discrepancy.

The ministry of commerce’s statement came on Thursday, a day after it revised gold import data by slashing November’s numbers by $5 billion to $9.84 billion.

Officials scrutinized the data after noticing an “unusual surge” in precious metal imports in November, the ministry said.

The Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) and DG (Systems) at the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) conducted an investigation that linked the surge in precious metal imports to a data migration error from SEZ Online to ICEGATE.

SEZ Online is a system used specifically for managing operations within India’s special economic zones (SEZs), while ICEGATE (Indian Customs Electronic Gateway), is a broader platform used by the Indian Customs to manage electronic filing of import and export documentation across all ports.

Until June, bills of entry for ‘warehousing’ and ‘ex-bond goods’ — both not considered as imports — were maintained by SEZ Online, a department of commerce system, while the bill of entry for ‘house consumption’ — which is considered actual import — was handled by ICEGATE, Bloomberg reported,  adding that since July, ICEGATE has integrated all data in a common system for faster data dissemination.

“During the reconciliation exercise, it was observed that…the system was calculating both imports into SEZ and subsequent clearance into domestic tariff area as separate transactions after the migration,” the ministry statement said.

The duplicate counting of transactions: once when the goods entered SEZs and again upon their clearance into the domestic tariff area led to an overestimation in import volumes.

DGCIS receives trade data from more than 500 locations and about 250,000 transactions every day from different sea ports, land ports, airport and inland container depots.

Export-import data from more than 100 SEZs was earlier captured by SEZ Online System and that of all other ports (non-SEZ locations) was captured by ICEGATE system. Both systems were transmitting the data separately to DGCIS for publishing foreign trade statistics, the statement said.

To streamline and improve data accuracy, ICEGATE has now assumed responsibility for all export-import data management. Despite this change, the integration of systems is ongoing, with some technical issues still to be resolved, the ministry said.

DGCIS routinely undertakes revisions of EXIM data to address any inaccuracies and ensure the data conforms to international statistical standards, it added.