Trading on good news

Monthly trade data are usually given out by the commerce secretary and Director General of Foreign Trade. But on Tuesday it was Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma who did the honours. That was no surprise because the trade data for August registered double-digit growth for the second month in a row. And Sharma, ever the consummate politician, was happy to nudge out the bureaucrats as harbinger of good news, never mind that the export performance was really courtesy a weaker rupee rather than anything the government had done. But journalists, trained to be cynical about good news, were also anxious to understand how the measures against gold imports were working out and if this month's downtick was part of a trend. Sharma was clearly at a loss. He merely reiterated that gold imports were indeed falling and then refused to take any questions on the matter, leaving journalists quite stumped.