Sunil Jain: Getting worse

PERSPECTIVES

While there has always been a difference between data as captured by the Director General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics and the RBI's Balance of Payments (BoP) data, the problem seems to be getting worse.

During 2004-05, the difference between the two was around $9 billion but this rose to $10.2 billion in just the first half of 2005-06. While the major part of the difference has traditionally been explained away as being due to defence imports and payments for aircraft lease, the matter's not so simple as there is even a great difference in the data for textile exports. Look at the data of US and EU textile imports from India and they're dramatically different from the

Indian data of exports to these countries.