Major irregularities have surfaced in the country's external trade with about 65%-96% of export data found not matching against their corresponding banking transactions. A recent check was conducted by the central bank which revealed that the unmatched data is worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore of exports. 

 

Bringing all export transactions under the scanner of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the government has asked the central bank to set up a monitoring cell that will coordinate with banks to track all banking transactions of exporters. 

"The automated and unified data processing and monitoring system will scan all exports from the country," minister of state for finance Namo Narain Meena had informed Parliament on Friday. Under this system, all data will flow first to the RBI server and then to authorized dealer banks. The government has already started matching export data with the direct transaction receipts generated by banks; the data received through forms filled by exporters with the Customs department; and the software exports data collected through declarations made in SOFTEX forms. 

The data received from the Customs department shows exports worth more than Rs 2.33 lakh crore are not matching with the banking transactions of these firms. Similarly, the data collected through SOFTEX revealed at least Rs 1.51 lakh crore of exports are not matching with their banking transactions. 

The authorized banks appointed by the RBI to match export data have been asked to report to the central bank the realization data based on the documents submitted by exporters. A secured RBI website has been created for this purpose for the banks to coordinate with the central bank. 

The RBI database will be updated on a real time basis to facilitate quicker follow up/data generation/policy formulation by the RBI regarding exports. "This will involve two-way traffic of data to and from a separate server at the RBI without interfering in any way with the dedicated RBI server," Meena said.  (Times of India)