Air-India-Time for Reconsideration


sions account for Rs 33 crores. What has not been disclosed is the basis of these revisions. Foreign Trade Ministry sources have suggested that the revisions were necessitated by "delayed" returns from the Customs authorities. But there have also been reports of a change in the system of reporting trade statistics based on provisional shipping bills corrected for short and shut-out shipments whereas the old system was based on finally passed-out shipping bills. This change obviously makes the month-to- month figures non-comparable with those of the previous year. Whether the figure for 1970-71 as a whole is comparable to that of the earlier years needs to be clarified.