Data goof-up: Govt asks for revamping system

Commerce and industry Minister Anand Sharma in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha said that in order to prevent recurrence of errors relating to industrial production data, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has requested all concerned data source agencies to adhere to the time frame for supplying monthly production data.

"As regards prevention of errors in trade data, Director General (Systems), CBEC, has been requested to review the entire software used so that such mistakes do not occur in future," he said.

Sharma said that at the time of compilation of index of industrial production (IIP) for February, it was detected that in the IIP for January, the production data of sugar was incorrectly reported.

"Immediately after the detection of the error, the revised growth rate for January was compiled. Due to this change and also minor updation of data received from other source agencies, the growth rate for January was revised from 6.8 per cent to 1.1 per cent," he added.

Similarly, Sharma said, that during August 2011, some discrepancies in export figures were noticed and immediately the matter was verified in detail.

"It was seen that at the time of generation of Daily Transaction Report, some transaction records got repeated and as a result certain data got counted more than once," he said. PTI RR NS

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