. 9 28. 2 71. 5 2005 - 06 40. 4 31. 1 60. 9 2006 - 07 ( p ) 40. 0 26. 4 61. 0 * at end - march. note : data exclude devolvement but include mss and non - competitive bids. one of the key issues in the development of the market for a better price discovery is liquidity of securities. it was observed that, of the universe of a large number of outstanding securities, only a few securities are actively traded in the secondary market. the reserve bank has been following a policy of passive consolidation through re - issuance of existing securities with a view to enhancing liquidity in the secondary segment of the government securities market. the share of re - issuances in the total securities issued was 97. 7 per cent during 2005 - 06. active consolidation of government securities has also been attempted under the debt buyback scheme introduced in july 2003, which is expected to be more actively pursued now. as a result of the developmental measures undertaken, the volume of transactions has increased manifold over the past decade ( chart 6 ). the significant drop in turnover in 2004 - 05 and 2005 - 06 could be due to a “ buy and hold ” tendency of the participants other than commercial banks, particularly insurance companies, which now hold a substantial portion of government securities, particularly those of longer maturities. the decline could also be attributed to the asymmetric response of investors to the interest rate cycle. in the absence of a facility of short selling in government securities, participants generally refrained from taking positions which resulted in volumes drying up in a falling market ( chart 7 ). to keep the markets liquid and active even during the bearish times, and more importantly, to give the participants a tool to better manage their interest rate risk, intra - day short selling in government securities was permitted among eligible participants, viz., scheduled commercial banks ( scbs ) and primary dealers ( pds ) in february 2006. subsequently, the short positions were permitted to be carried beyond intra - day for a period of five trading days, effective january 31, 2007. to further improve the liquidity in the government securities market, guidelines for trading in when issued “ wi ” market were issued by the reserve bank in may, 2006. trading in “ wi ” segment, which commenced in august 2006, was initially permitted in reissued securities. it takes place from the date of announcement of auction till one day prior to allotment of auction

of macroeconomic variables for supporting monetary policy making. the department is also providing statistical support to other functions of the bank. in the wake of the recent financial crisis, there is renewed focus on availability of information and statistical gaps globally. the department is actively engaged with other international bodies such as the imf, g20, bis and fsb in strengthening our financial statistics and adopting international best practice. notwithstanding various achievements, there are challenges. i take this opportunity to focus on three of those : • how to make the best use of granular data from banks? • how to enhance the scope and coverage of corporate finance statistics? • how to further develop asset price statistics? first, the requirement of disaggregated granular banking data on a more frequent basis for policy and research has increased. for example, we have been compiling account level data on deposit, credit and interest rates on an annual basis through basic statistical returns ( bsrs ). these data are an important source for understanding monetary transmission. hence, there is a need to obtain these data on a higher frequency, at least on a quarterly bis central bankers ’ speeches basis, electronically from the banks ’ source systems. moreover, data on similar items obtained through various statistical returns show significant differences. hence, there is need to harmonise data definition across various returns submitted to different departments of the bank. this will require a close coordination between statisticians and regulatory departments to identify, harmonise and mitigate data gaps. on the part of the banks, implementation of core banking solution has created the potential for banks to provide granular data electronically, both for statistical and supervisory purposes, directly from their source systems. it is important for reporting entities to adopt straight through processing without manual intervention so as to maintain data integrity. this will also help rationalisation of various returns thereby reducing the reporting burden on banks. of course, as granularity increases data size becomes large. i am happy to note that today we have two special talks on big data which will have practical relevance for our data analysis. second, the reserve bank is compiling data on corporate finance such as production, sales and profitability. these data are also used to generate corporate saving and investment at the national level. from a financial stability perspective, the corporate balance sheet data are important for assessing risk parameters such as leverage and unhedged foreign currency borrowings. corporate performance data is also important to understand the micro foundation of pricing power and hence inflation dynamics. there is, therefore, a