New Delhi: Revised numbers for India’s goods trade between February and March 2023 are about $10 billion different from the initial estimates, The Hindu reported. The overall export and import numbers for the last year have also been brought down by about $3 billion each.
“While exports were earlier reckoned to have grown 6% in 2022-23 to hit $447.46 billion, that number has now been pared to $444.4 billion, reflecting a 5.3% rise from 2021-22. The import bill for last year has also been scaled down from $714.24 billion to $711.85 billion, indicating a growth of 16.1%. The trade deficit for the year has risen 40.8% to $267.45 bn, slightly higher than the 40% estimated earlier,” The Hindu reported.
Good exports for February have been revised higher by almost $3.1 billion, according to the newspaper, going from $33.9 billion to about $37 billion. The import bill for February was revised to go up by over $1.93 billion.
For March, both exports and imports were revised downwards, The Hindu reported. Exports were brought down by $3.03 billion from the initial $38.38 billion estimate to $35.35 billion, and imports were brought down by around $2.4 billion to $55.72 billion.
“Data revisions amounting to over $500 million a month are not normal, but we have been seeing significantly higher revisions over the past year and a half compared to the period before that,” Vivek Kumar, an economist at QuantEco Research, told The Hindu.
“It is very puzzling and raises uncertainty on the outlook for India’s current account deficit and thereby rupee. With average monthly upward revision in net trade deficit to the tune of $1.5 billion, the cumulative for the year could add up to $18 billion. Such sizeable revision in trade deficit data turns analysis somewhat challenging,” he continued.