Lies, white lies and statistics – textile exports – white paper
There are the three kinds of lies – lies, white lies and statistics. The Commerce ministry has realized that the figures of textile exports from India did not match with the import figures of USA and EU. So the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) and the DG, Systems of CBEC undertook a study and realized that missing entries contributed to a whopping 12 billion dollars! The Commerce ministry’s white paper says,
The Monthly Press Release statement on merchandise trade brought out from 1999-2000 upto 2005-06 by the Department of Commerce had been comparing the first reported provisional trade data of the current period with the latest available provisionally revised data of the corresponding period of the previous year. Prior to this, the Press Release statements contained both the provisional figures as well as the provisionally revised figures of the previous year for computation of growth rates.
In such complicated comparisons, ultimately figures will lose their meaning. So what do they want to do? Here is what the white paper suggests,
Till such time as the trade data series stabilises completely it may be appropriate to compute growth rates on provisional to provisional basis while at the same time giving the latest available provisionally revised figures of last year for reasons of transparency and comparability.
Means what? You will continue to get wrong figures!
See White Paper released by Commerce Ministry