Technical Glitch Caused Inflated Gold Import Data

New Delhi: The government’s initiative to migrate SEZ data from NSDL software to ICEGATE system for streamlined reporting of import data caused double counting of gold imports, resulting in inflated figures and the issue has now been largely rectified, government sources said.

The downward revision has provided the actual picture of trade deficit (difference between imports and exports), which was earlier looking very high. The deficit for November will now be revised downwards from $37.84 billion to about $32.8 billion. Similarly, there will be a revision in overall import numbers as well. On account of the correction, the Commerce Ministry has re-vised downwards the gold import data for November by $5 billion to $9.84 billion and for the first eight months of the current fiscal by $11.7 billion to $37.38 billion.

The double counting occurred as imports into the country and the clearances from SEZs (special economic zones) to domestic tariff area (DTA) were counted twice due to technical glitches.