TIOL-DDT 453 · the untouched capture
Rendered as it looked. Links and images are disabled in this view; the file itself is untouched.
<html> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <title>Taxindiaonline's DDT 402</title> </head> <body> <p> <b><font color="#663399" size="3" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">TIOL-DDT 453</font><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> 20 09 2006<br> Wednesday</font></b></p> <p align=center><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong><font color="#006600">Lies, white lies and statistics – textile exports – white paper</font></strong></font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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,</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In such complicated comparisons, ultimately figures will lose their meaning. So what do they want to do? Here is what the white paper suggests,</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Means what? You will continue to get wrong figures! </font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.taxindiaonline.com/RC2/pdfdocs/whitepaper.pdf">See White Paper released by Commerce Ministry </a></font></p> <p align=center><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong><font color="#006600">DG, systems is moving – needs 40,000 sq.feet office space EOI invited</font></strong></font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Directorate of Systems, CBEC wants 40,000 sq.feet of office space for establishing its ITES centre. This will house the office of the DG and the premises should have facilities for creating CBEC’s Network Operations Centre- NOC. The new place is to be in operation by the beginning of next year. </font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This department has been tinkering with computerization for the last 30 or so years. One of the first licence holders of Oracle, after spending Crores of rupees and years of hard labour, the pathetic situation is that we are not able to get our revenue figures properly, Ranges are not connected with internet, web site is not updated and above all there is no system of making available the government notifications as soon as they are issued. What is the “systems” we are talking about when we are not capable of taking care of elementary primary things? Compared to the Railway reservation system, computerization in the Customs and excise department is nothing. It can be done easily, only if we have the will- not the money. The other day I met a Superintendent who is posted as Superintendent (computers) in a Commissionerate headquarters. He was lamenting that he did not know anything about computers, but nobody checked about that fact before posting him there. I told him, he is in august company; there was a web master in the Systems Directorate who did not know how to open a computer. </font></p> <p align=center><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><font color="#006600">Gems & Jewellery industry – liberalized regime</font></b></font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, KamalNath, assured the Gems & Jewellery Industry of Government’s commitment to support the industry through a liberalized policy regime. “We are confident that this will improve the overall competitiveness of the Gems & Jewellery industry”, he said, underlining the government’s resolve to address all issues relating to this important sector, including the impact of the recent floods in Surat with its large concentration of diamond processing units. </font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Gems & Jewellery constitutes 15.13% of India’s exports and has marked a growth of 12.97% in 2005-06 over 2004-05. “Today, India is an acknowledged leader in the world in diamond processing. We are also the largest importers in the world of bullion, importing about 800 tonnes. Our export of gold jewellery is showing a healthy growth and has increased by 11% during 2005-2006 over 2004-05”, the Minister said. </font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Availability of skilled manpower is a key strength that has enabled growth in India’s Gems & Jewellery Sector. India has a large pool of skilled artisans with vast traditional knowledge and expertise in jewellery making. The minister informed, “This manpower pool is also being augmented through trained designers well versed in latest design software.” </font></p> <p align=center><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><font color="#006600">"China and India: Learning From Each Other" - and they could teach the IMF</font></b></font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The International Monetary Fund has released a book <b>"China and India: Learning From Each Other”. </b>At a meeting to launch the book yesterday,<strong>Steve Dunaway</strong><b>,</b> Deputy Director, Asia and Pacific Department, IM, said,</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The book comes out of a conference that we put on last year in Beijing, and our intention was--this was a second of two conferences that we ran on China and India, and our attention was to bring people from India and China together to talk about their experiences in various aspects of reform, because in some aspects, India has been more successful than China, particularly in terms of financial market banking reform. The Indians have progressed further. And the Chinese are probably done a better job in terms of fiscal policy, also in labor market development.</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So, by talking to each other, we thought that there might be some lessons that came out of that, that they would learn from each other, hence the title of the book, and I guess an appropriate subtitle of the book would be--and they could teach the IMF because one of the big advantages, I guess, that we have is that we can draw on the experiences of our membership in helping individual countries, and particularly in terms of the reform process, and that was the motivating factor behind putting--pulling together the papers at the conference and putting this book out, that we wanted to help inform the policy debate in both India and China on those issues, and we also thought, well, maybe some other countries might benefit as well.</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now, one of the unique aspects of the book is what we did was, we invited market participants for the conference, not academics, so--and we mixed it up. It's a combination. For example, in terms of banking reform, where we had the head of one of the largest Indian banks to talk about bank reform in India. On the Chinese side we brought in one of the senior people from the Chinese Bank Regulatory Commission to talk about it from the regulatory--reform from the regulatory side. On the securities market, the equities market, we had one of the leading people in India who was working on reform--who had worked on reform of the stock market in India, and we had the head of the Shanghai Stock Exchange exchanging views on it.</font></p> <p align="justify"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So, we thought in that way this would be much more practical in the advice, and people could gain more from the experiences, particularly focusing on such key reforms as financial markets, integration on a global sense, and other policies supporting growth.</font></p> <p align="justify"><font color="#FF6666" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Until tomorrow with more DDT </font></p> <p align="justify"><font color="#FF6666" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Have a nice day. </font></p> <p align="justify"><font color="#FF6666" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mail your comments to</font> <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="mailto:vijaywrite@taxindiaonline.com">vijaywrite@taxindiaonline.com</a></span></font></p> </body> </html>