per akosha18 there are 10, 506 consumer complaints received19 against financial sector ( includes banking, finance, insurance, real estate and construction ) during the period january 2013 to march 2013. as part of financial literacy initiatives, if banks were to undertake proactive steps in helping the common public to get over their english phobia, it is felt that the number of complaints would increase manifold. banks & other fis 19 ) private corporate initiatives a few large private corporates have undertaken projects such as e - choupal / e - sagar ( itc ), hariyali kisan bazar ( dcm ), project shakti ( hul ), etc. reportedly, these pioneering projects have brought about vast improvement in the lives of the participants and set the tone for economic development in their command areas ; which is a pre - requisite for financial inclusion efforts to be undertaken by the banking system. private corporates 20 ) post - offices : post offices ( pos ) are closest to the rural people compared to bank branches. as on march 31, 2011, there are 1, 54, 866 post offices in india, of which 1, 39, 040 ( 89. 8 % ) were in rural areas. all round efforts should be made to ensure that post offices play a greater and more active role due to known advantages. progressively, more pos may be engaged to become bcs of banks due to well - known advantages. rbi and government 21 ) white label atms : rbi has already started allowing eligible private entities to establish white label atms. there is case for its acceleration. rbi, private corporates 22 ) msme – financial exclusion : the statistics based on 4th census on msme sector revealed that only 5. 18 % of the units ( both registered and un - registered ) had availed finance through institutional sources, 2. 05 % got finance from non - institutional sources. the majority of units i. e., 92. 77 % had no finance or depended on self - finance. sidbi should go into the reasons for not getting access to formal sources of credit by the majority of msme units. sidbi / banks 23 ) shg - bank linkage – penetration : although shg - bank linkage model is successful in rural areas, it has not spread evenly throughout india, the spread is poor especially in the financially excluded regions namely central and north - eastern. nabard 24 ) shg - bank linkage outstanding bank

productivity : the promise of progress 1 i. introduction good evening! i welcome you all to the sixth asia klems conference, to india and to the reserve bank of india, henceforth rbi. we are honoured to host this conference in physical mode after the arduous isolation imposed by the pandemic. the hill town of lonavala, an ancient resting place for travellers and traders, is nestled in india ’ s soon - to - be monsoon - drenched western ghats – a chain of mountains running 30 to 50 km inland parallel to india ’ s west coast across six provinces. we do hope that its verdant ambience will dispel all pandemic blues and provide a salubrious backdrop for this conference which has “ productivity, growth, and resilience in the asian economies ” as its theme. the conference itself is a tribute to the fortitude and perseverance displayed by asian economies through the pandemic and the war in ukraine. before i turn to the subject of my address today, i thought a journey down memory lane might be appropriate for the occasion. the asia klems has a short but eventful history, replete with promoting the building of databases and conducting international productivity comparisons among asian economies. the first asia klems conference was held in tokyo in 2011. the abiding interest in that conference was in productivity growth, going by the papers presented, a theme to which we return today. the 1 inaugural address delivered by michael debabrata patra, deputy governor, reserve bank of india ( rbi ) at the sixth asia klems conference on june 11, 2023 at lonavala. valuable comments received from sitikantha pattanaik, rajib das, sadhan kumar chattopadhyay, siddhartha nath, sreerupa sengupta, shruti joshi and editorial help from vineet kumar srivastava are gratefully acknowledged. next four conferences were hosted in seoul, taipei, tokyo and beijing in which attention diversified to setting up the klems database and accounting framework, structural change and sources of productivity growth, methodological issues and productivity gaps, growth and productivity, and the role of factors such as information and communication technology or ict, intangibles, trade and labour markets. at the time of the fifth asia klems meeting in 2019, india was selected as the venue for the next conference. unfortunately, co