basic savings bank deposit accounts ( bsbdas ) have been added, taking the total no. of bsbdas to 182 million. share of ict based accounts have increased substantially – percentage of ict accounts to total bsbdas has increased from 25 % in march 10 to 45 % in march 13 • with the addition of nearly 9. 48 million farm sector households during this period, 33. 8 million households have been provided with small entrepreneurial credit as at the end of march 2013 • with the addition of nearly 2. 25 million non - farm sector households during this period, 3. 6 million households have been provided with small entrepreneurial credit as at the end of march 2013. • about 490 million transactions have been carried out in ict based accounts through bcs during the three year period. ii. the relevance of international standards and principles for stretching a retail payment services beyond domestic boundaries 11. it is my considered opinion that the international community for too long has not accorded adequate importance to the retail payment system. i agree that reasons could be many and relevant. for instance, retail payment systems are far too heterogeneous. however, the growing importance of retail payments, the increased complexities and technology driven payment systems call for a revisit. further, there are some retail payment systems in most countries which are ubiquitous in nature and have system - wide importance. at least in a large country like india we are talking about retail payment systems which are quite significant. let me state a few numbers. we clear on a daily basis approximately 4. 5 million cheques, operate nearly 2 million person to person electronic fund transfers, handle around 1. 5 million bulk payments i. e. one - to - many and many - to - one payments. these are in addition to the large volume of card payments, internet and mobile transactions. we will be certainly better off having some principles and standards developed for the retail payment systems. let me bring out a few issues to support my argument for international standards for retail payment systems. 12. there are retail systems that have cross - jurisdictional presence. for instance, card payments, international remittances, paypal etc. 13. in the case of card payments, it is generally the leading global card networks which are taking the lead in determining the industry standards for form factor as well as security standards ( emv chip ; 2fa ), without active regulatory intervention. however, such standards have implications for countries – in terms of cost of migration to

absorption of a more enduring nature by way of sterilisation from the day - to - day normal liquidity management operations. in the foreign exchange market, the exchange rate policy adopted by india has been one of managing volatility with no fixed target, while allowing the underlying demand and supply conditions to determine the exchange rate movements over a period in an orderly way. market players are also enabled to manage risk through various designated hedging instruments. prudent management of the external sector coupled with a calibrated approach to capital account liberalization has been an important component of macroeconomic policy to ensure financial stability. in the government bond market, the major objectives of reforms were to impart liquidity and depth to the market by broadening the investor base and ensuring market - clearing interest rate mechanism. the important initiatives introduced included a market - related government borrowing and consequently, a phased elimination of automatic monetisation of central government budget deficits. this, in turn, enabled the shift from direct to indirect tools of monetary regulation - activating open market operations and the development of secondary market. the entire range of changes necessitated developments in ( a ) instruments, ( b ) institutions and ( c ) technology, along with concomitant improvements in ( d ) transparency and ( e ) the legal framework. as of april 1, 2006 the frbm act now prohibits the reserve bank from subscribing to government securities in the primary market. this has necessitated the further development of techniques and instruments to ensure stability in the g - securities market. developing a robust and secure financial infrastructure has been a key component of financial stability. towards this end, the reserve bank undertook several initiatives to upgrade the payment and settlement system in the country. salient among these included electronic clearing service, electronic funds transfer, establishment of a secured private network which serves as a private gateway to the financial system. based on the framework prevalent in developed financial markets, a real time gross settlement ( rtgs ) system has been operationalised. the rtgs provides for an electronic - based settlement of inter - bank and customer - based transactions with intra - day collateralised liquidity support from the reserve bank. side by side, in its quest for benchmarking with international best practices, the reserve bank has benchmarked its conformity with the core principles for systematically important payment system ( cpss ). the degree of compliance with these principles is presently on par with those prevailing internationally. challenges to financial stability given the inherent dynamic nature of