announced that by the year 2070, india will achieve the target of net - zero. this would necessitate creating an enabling ecosystem for financing india ’ s transition to a green economy. 22. in india, both the government and reserve bank of india have been participating in the global discussions on climate risks and have already taken quite a few initiatives in this regard. the government, in the union budget for 2022 - 23 announced that climate action would be a key priority and proposed that as a part of its overall market borrowings in 2022 - 23, sovereign green bonds ( sgbs ) will be issued for mobilizing resources for green infrastructure. the proceeds will be deployed in public sector projects which will help in reducing the carbon intensity of the economy. this is by no means a small step. over time, the sgbs would provide a pricing reference for the private sector entities in india for their inr denominated borrowing for esg linked debt. thus, the issuance of sgbs would help in creating an ecosystem which fosters a greater flow of capital into green projects and entities undertaking such projects. 23. recognising the need for concerted efforts in the area, the reserve bank has concomitantly set up a sustainable finance group ( sfg ) within its department of regulation in may 2021 to lead the regulatory initiatives in area of climate risk and sustainable finance in the indian context. as i mentioned previously, rbi had already released a discussion paper on climate risk and sustainable finance in july 2022 covering a gamut of issues on the rbi ’ s website for comments of stakeholders. it is heartening to mention that we have received comments from a large number of regulated entities and other stakeholders. these are being carefully examined before we frame any regulatory guidance on climate risk and sustainable finance. 24. along with the discussion paper, we had also released the results of a survey undertaken to assess the approach, level of preparedness and progress made by leading scheduled commercial banks in india for managing climate - related financial risk. the survey, which covered 12 public sector banks, 16 private sector banks and 6 foreign banks, provided useful insights and the feedback from this exercise will help in shaping our regulatory and supervisory approach. 25. another notable feature for our financial ecosystem is that while rest of the world is still grappling in developing new instruments to funnel funding to green and sustainable companies and projects, we already have a wellaccepted incentive - based instrument in the form of priority

spillover ; and ( d ) communication of official statistics. the latest phase aims to address data gaps related to ( i ) climate change ; ( ii ) household distributional information ; ( iii ) fintech and financial inclusion ; and ( iv ) scaling up access to private and administrative data and improve data sharing. 14. the proliferation of internet has led to an explosion in the availability and demand for data. businesses are making large investments to predict the behaviour of consumers by exploiting the advances made in the field of data analytics. amidst this inundation of data and inferences, it is important that peculiarities and nonconformities are subjected to robust statistical analysis and peer review before deriving conclusions. 15. in other words, statistics should focus on laying down the pathway towards proper interpretation in the present world of data abundance. this would facilitate more informed decision making, clarity in communication from decision makers and formation of rational expectations from market participants. 16. in most countries today including our own, there are greater demands from the profession of statistics for policy inputs and decision making. such rising demands on the profession necessitate robust quality of statistics and statistical methods. i would encourage the statisticians in the reserve bank of india, as well as those outside the bank, to make full use of the opportunities available by way of advances in statistical methods. we are living in an era where computing power practically has no boundaries. this is an opportunity as well as a challenge for statisticians across the world. 17. i earnestly hope that today ’ s deliberations will inspire our officers, especially the younger officers, to ask pertinent questions and rise to the challenges of the post - pandemic world. their endeavour should be to innovate solutions keeping in mind the mahalanobis dictum 7 : “ statistics must have a clearly defined purpose, one aspect of which is scientific advance and the other, human welfare and national development. ” 18. my best wishes for productive deliberations in today ’ s conference. thank you. rao, c. radhakrishna ( 1993 ). “ statistics must have a purpose : the mahalanobis dictum. ” sankhya : the indian journal of statistics, series a ( 1961 - 2002 ), vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 331 – 49.