Commerce ministry's 'trade gap'

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was discussing the issue of the rising trade deficit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the figures went missing from the ministry of commerce and industry's website. While all the other figures on India's exports to and imports from China were displayed, the column on trade balance was inexplicably left blank. Not that the omission deterred anyone from quoting the numbers. But it was a strange omission given the high-profile and economic-oriented nature of the visit and the fact that the world would look for just this statistic. To be sure, the trade balance numbers for Japan, Germany, Russia and South Africa were missing too, but the ones for the US were available.