Govt admits $9 billion export gaffe

Fears about exports being shown onthe higher side have come true with the government conceding on Friday that itgoofed up as the numbers got inflated by $9 billion in the April-Novemberperiod of the current fiscal.

 

"Every damn number for the last eight months has beenrevised...," Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar said, conceding the crucialbalance of trade deficit was also kept undervalued at $107 billion instead of $117billion.

There were not only mis-classifications but also "errorin double counting and all sorts of things" due to problems in thecomputer software which was recently upgraded, he said.

Having admitted mistakes, Khullar said that at least now"the notion that the government is deliberately cooking up and tellinglies...has got to stop. How many people will come and tell you that we havegoofed up; there was a mistake. I have said it openly there is nothing to hide;there is no shame in admitting that there is something wrong".

However, he said that even after factoring in mistakes, theexports grew by 33.2 per cent between April-November.

The data goof-up was 4-5 per cent of the export billing andon an average it was inflated by $1 billion a month, Khullar said.

There were doubts on huge growth in exports which was evenshown at 82 per cent in July at a time when the manufacturing was going down.

"Exports are still doing pretty damn well. (Earlier)you thought it (growth) would be 40-45 per cent, now it is down to 33 per cent(during April-November this fiscal)," he said.

For the eight month period, total exports have beencalculated at USD 192.7 billion, while imports at USD 309.5 billion (growth of30.2 per cent).