The Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics (DGCI&S) has entered into an agreement with Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy to supply foreign trade data.
As per the agreement, DGCI&S data would be supported by CMIEs monitoring of the external sector, which is based on international statistics. This is expected to add to the value of the information being dispensed besides making it more useful to industry, academia and policy makers.
CMIE is a Mumbai-based private sector data and research outfit.
This is perhaps for the first time that a government organisation has entered into a agreement with a private sector player for supplying data. This service is scheduled to be launched on November 24.
Working with the DGCI&S and the commerce ministry has been a surprisingly smooth experience. The DGCI&S has commendable systems for data collection and normalisation. It is perhaps the best government information you can get, said Riyaz Khan, manager of the service.
In September, the minister for agriculture had launched the directory of Indian agriculture, produced by the CMIE. This is expected to be expanded into a full fledged service by June 1998.
CMIE is also planning to launch new services on banking and finance, energy and infrastructure and regional economies besides an on-line service.
It has also entered into several marketing tie-ups with international information vending agencies to expand the reach of its databases and research works. At present, Reuters, Dialog, Datastream, Internet Securities are among the agencies vending CMIE research works and databases.
