The Sebi Committee on Disclosures & Accounting Standards has recommended that the audited figures of the major heads of the balance sheet be disclosed by listed companies on a half-yearly basis. This is a major step in improving disclosures. And, copious public disclosures are the best means of ensuring better corporate governance. Besides, the data thus generated helps in better policy interventions. Such a disclosure around October 2008 would have helped us gauge the strength of India Inc around the time of the disaster much better. Nevertheless, Sebi?s move is commendable and is likely to go a long way in improving the efficiency of the financial markets in India.

Sebi proposes to relax the 30-day period within which companies are required to release their financials to 45 days. This is a bit disappointing. At the same time, it proposes to reduce from 90 to 60 days the time that companies are allowed for disclosing the audited financials for the year. While the reduction in the time is welcome, the relaxation for the last quarter is odd. Companies often do not provide last quarter results because of this relaxation. Sebi should plug this loophole in its disclosure requirements.

Sebi?s moves at improving disclosures began more than a decade ago when it mandated the release of half-yearly profit and loss figures by listed companies. Soon, this graduated to quarterly release. We hope that the move to disclose half-yearly balance sheet figures will also soon move to quarterly disclosures.

The public infrastructure to access data on companies has improved because of Sebi?s moves and also because of the efforts of the government. The best example is the ministry of company affairs? MCA-21 project that makes available the information filed by registered companies on its Web site. The public at large can access hundreds of thousands of reports online by paying a nominal fee using a credit card. This is a vast improvement over the earlier system when one had to visit the office of the Registrar of Companies in the region in which the company was registered and request for a copy of the reports.

Sebi has the EDIFAR system that provides a lot more information on listed companies. An important difference is that Sebi?s EDIFAR is free of cost to the user while the ministry of company affairs charges a fee for access. Given that the government charges companies to file reports, it is unfair for it to also charge for its access. The MCA is also one of the very few ministries that charges for what is essentially public data.

Most ministries do not charge for the information they make available on their web sites. And, there have been some significant improvements. The India Meteorological Department got a lot of well-deserved flak for getting its forecast wrong this year. But, what may have gone unnoticed and unappreciated is the fact that in this same season, they have also improved disclosures regarding the progress of monsoon. Now, the IMD provides district-wise progress of the rains, unlike the meteorological department-wise disclosures made till now. It was a rare gesture for the IMD to admit their shortcoming, but it is a greater gesture for them to increase disclosures.

The roads sector is exceptional. The Vajpayee government launched the ambitious (and successful) project to improve the country?s connectivity through roads. But, there was never any clear idea of the length of roads that the country had. Even today, the most recent data available on the Web site of the ministry of road transport & highways is of 2004. And, this is a major improvement of the situation since till recently, the latest information was only till 2002. While there is copious information on the NHAI and its projects, there is no data beyond that. No wonder we zip through the Mumbai-Pune expressway but then get lost in the traffic at both the ends of the expressway.

While there is a lot of debate on the reforms in the education sector, it may be useful for the ministry to update its databases first. The latest data on the number of schools, students, teachers, etc is for 2004.

One consistent failure on data has been the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics (DGCI&S). Foreign Trade data have always been delayed. Unlike in many other areas, there is no timetable for the release of the detailed trade data. It took the DGCI&S four months to release the March 2009 trade statistics for principal commodities. They have still not released the detailed ITC trade data for the month and therefore, for 2008-09. All the decisions to provide relief to exporters during the Global Liquidity Crisis were based on either no data or worse still, unreliable data.

A similar failure is in the CSO?s publication of the Annual Survey of Industries . Till its significant deterioration, the ASI was the most important source to study the performance of the industrial sector. However, the delays have substantially reduced its usefulness. The latest ASI data published is for 2004-05.

The CSO is in the process of updating the IIP. But, it also needs to worry about the utility of the ASI database if it is released after a lag of more than five years. Contrast Sebi mandating the disclosure of information by companies and thereby making the market efficient against the CSO?s collection of the ASI data with the tax-payers? monies that does not make anyone wiser.

?The author heads Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy