Govt. blames double-counting of SEZ shipments for overestimating Gold, Silver import bills

A day after effecting a large-scale $14.2 billion downward revision of India’s goods import data for the first eight months of 2024-25, the Centre on Thursday said these erroneous figures were thrown up due to double counting of certain imports into Special Economic Zones (SEZs), and announced an inter-departmental committee to spruce up trade data’s credibility.

However, signalling that further data revisions could be in the offing, the Commerce and Industry Ministry said the principal commodity level data “uploaded recently” by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), “incorporates the first phase of reconciliations made till date”.

The data review was triggered when quick trade estimates for November 2024, released on December 16, revealed an “unusual surge in imports of precious metals”, the ministry said, referring to the record $14.9 billion gold import tally that was part of the numbers. The DGCIS and the DG (Systems) at the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) undertook a joint examination and reconciliation exercise.

“… Primarily, it was observed that due to migration of data transmission mechanism from SEZ to ICEGATE, figures of precious metals needed revision as it was noticed as the system was calculating both imports into SEZ and subsequent clearance into DTA [Domestic Tariff Area] as separate transactions after the migration,” the ministry noted. ICEGATE is a system used to capture trade volumes from all ports, while over 100 SEZs used a separate system to file their trade details.

Recently, it was decided to shift all export import (exim) declarations for SEZs to the ICEGATE system as well. “However, owing to persistence of certain technical glitches, the migration is still not complete. Both SEZ Online and ICEGATE are still capturing and transmitting mutually exclusive exim data to DGCIS,” the ministry explained.

“A committee has been formed with stakeholders from DGCIS, DG Systems (CBIC) and SEZs for creation of a robust mechanism for publishing consistent data,” the ministry informed in a statement on the unusual extent of trade data revisions, particularly for November, whose import bill was slashed by $6 billion from a previously estimated all-time high of $70 billion.