, e - money or the prepaid payment instruments, whether in the e - wallets, m - wallets, prepaid cards or paper coupons, have been brought under regulation for the first time with the enactment of the payment and settlement systems act, 2007. the act itself came into force from august 2008 and as mentioned earlier, the first guidelines on e - money were introduced in april 2009, and since then they have been liberalized in a significant way. we have allowed issue of prepaid instruments up to rs. 10, 000 for exclusive use for purchase of travel tickets without the need for kyc. it must, however, be remembered that there are certain statutory requirements under the prevention of money laundering act which need to be met. however, within the existing statute, the bank is constantly reviewing the position to identify the areas which impair the growth of e - money to initiate remedial measures. we have been on record that e - money is a more secure way of payments and needs to be promoted to ensure that our objectives of moving towards a less cash society. bis central bankers ’ speeches should msps be allowed on a standalone basis? 12. on the question of msps being allowed to do money transfer service on a standalone basis, perhaps such a measure would help in providing an alternative mode to the existing money order / instant money order being offered by the services, though it would be difficult for me to say which one would be a cheaper option. the department of posts also has over 1. 5 lakh post offices for delivery of services, though the imo is extended to just a little over 3000 post offices. the msps have the technology and an impressive agent network to deliver the service with efficiency. it was against this backdrop, that the non - bank entities have been permitted to enable prepaid card to card transfers. the model would, therefore, benefit the financially excluded population both in urban and rural areas to send or receive money in a convenient way. 13. it is still not clear to me as to why the demand for standalone msp model is persisting when we have allowed a far superior model where collaboration rather than competition is expected to result in a win win situation for all? why should the stake holders insist on an inferior alternative? are there any insurmountable problems in the collaborative model? if yes, what are they? 14. i am aware that some of the issues that come up in this regard relate to ( i ) who owns

i am happy to note that 5 papers have been already submitted for publication in rbi working paper series / rbi occasional papers / outside journals and others are in various stages of completion. 4. the research activities of the department encompass measurement of economic indicators, analysis, modelling and forecasting of economic growth, inflation, corporate performance and capturing economic agents ’ response to expected macro developments for forward looking monetary policy formulation. based on various univariate and multivariate models, projected path of growth and inflation is presented in the form of fan charts. in the current economic scenario, the analysis of growth - inflation trade - off, exchange rate passthrough and inflation persistence carried out by the department was particularly useful for calibrating monetary policy actions. 5. last year, the conference outlined several data and dissemination initiatives for better harmonisation and synergy between data producers and users. i am happy to note that the department has released a new user friendly interface of database on indian economy ( dbie ) and has transformed data warehouse utilities into a major production tool of the bank. all the major statistical publications of the bank, as well as all the tables of rbi bulletin and weekly statistical supplement ( wss ), are now generated directly from dbie. bis central bankers ’ speeches 6. the previous conference also emphasised the need for initiatives for improving banking data with regard to quality, coverage, presentation and dissemination. it was deliberated that data quality and coverage issues require a collaborative effort across the various regulatory, research as also policy departments so as to harmonize the reporting of data. in this connection, the department had several rounds of interactions during the year with rpcd and dbs to address these issues and resolve the same. regarding harmonizing the reporting of deposits and credit data at granular level, action has been initiated for codification of the input data structure at the data processing and reporting systems of banks as per the classification and coding system followed for the bsr system. the main objective is to source all these data from the banks ’ cbs platforms so that data reported by the banks to various departments of the reserve bank become consistent with the granular databases maintained by the banks. in order to take these initiatives forward, this conference has two structured panel discussions with participation of the stakeholder departments of the bank. the outcome of the discussion today and tomorrow is expected to pave the way for availability of quality banking statistics. 7. on the operational front, the department conducted a survey on demand and usage of