village level entrepreneurs. under this programme and in observance of 75 years of independence, psos will adopt 75 villages across the country and convert them into digital payment enabled villages. they will conduct two camps in each of these villages to enhance awareness and onboard merchants in the village for digital payments. 11. i appeal to all the stakeholders like industry, payment system operators, media, digital payment users, and others to teach non - users about the merits of digital payments and fulfil the mission of " har payment digital " with every person in the country becoming a digital payments user. 2 / 2 bis - central bankers'speeches

the expansion a good deal longer. 3. why the improvement? the fact that the annual growth in gdp per capita has increased in the 1990s, and that it is now faster than in oecd countries, is a welcome development. the major reason for improvement in gdp per capita is that a closely - related variable, namely labour productivity, has also shown a clear improvement in the 1990s. in addition, multi - factor productivity - which is a little further removed from gdp per capita - has also shown a clear lift compared with earlier decades. table 3 shows a comparison of these measures of productivity over the three most recent expansions. table 3 productivity growth in expansion - per cent per annum labour productivity multi - factor productivity 1970s 1980s 1990s 2. 2 1. 0 0. 9 0. 8 2. 3 1. 8 note : the expansion periods are : march 1975 - june 1982, march 1983 - june 1990 and june 1991 - june 1999. the reason for the pronounced rise in productivity is essentially microeconomic. it is because labour is being used more efficiently, capital is being allocated to areas of the highest productivity and innovation is occurring more rapidly than before. partly this may be due to increased managerial efficiency, but a more likely explanation is to be found in the policy changes designed to make the economy more flexible and competitive - in other words, policies designed to affect the supply side of the economy. among these i include financial market deregulation, tariff reductions, privatisations, competition policy and decentralisation of the labour market. these have all made a contribution, but it is probably the interaction between them that is more important ; in this sense, the total effect is more than the sum of the parts. i have talked on this subject on earlier occasions, 3 so i will not repeat myself tonight, other than to observe that these have brought tangible benefits that are often overlooked by the beneficiaries. the other distinguishing feature of the 1990s is that the expansion has continued for longer. national accounts data up to the june quarter of 1999 show eight years of expansion at an average rate of 4 % per annum, already exceeding the length of the previous two expansions. all forecasters are expecting significant growth in the current financial year, so that, even on the most pessimistic assumptions, the present economic expansion will be a lot longer than its predecessors in the 1970s and 1980s. more importantly, in earlier expansions, serious imbalances had built up by this stage. in