society organizations and social activists is limited owing to the geographical size and population and, perhaps, it is due to this that the impact of the act has yet to attain its envisioned level. our data reveals that the number of applications we received from the underdeveloped and backward regions of the country was far less in relation to the developed regions. thus applications from the north - east ( assam : 4 and tripura : 2 ) constituted barely 0. 1 percent of the 5, 087 applications received during 2010 – 11. if this is generally the case, there is need for educating people in these regions on rti. i have been closely associated with the implementation of the rti act in my organization right from its inception, first as the cpio and then as the appellate authority and have derived great satisfaction from the assignment. i wish to narrate briefly our own experience in this regard and the challenges that we faced. at the outset, the tone was set by our governor who declared that reserve bank of india should welcome rti act as an opportunity to improve our corporate governance through greater transparency and accountability. the personal interest taken by the governor in the implementation of the act played an important role in sensitizing our staff towards the spirit of the new law. bis central bankers ’ speeches we studied systems prevalent in certain other central banks with a view to adopting best practices in systems and procedures. the law was new and its proper implementation was important for the bank ’ s reputation. further, it was necessary to maintain consistency in our responses and ensure that the exemptions available in the act were applied correctly. we, therefore, began with a centralized model with one cpio who was an executive director and the senior most deputy governor as appellate authority. later, after about four years, on gaining sufficient experience on what our stance should be on various types of requests, coupled with the fact that increased awareness of the act had resulted in a significant rise in the number of applications, a partially decentralised approach in the implementation of rti was put in place with effect from november, 2009. accordingly, dissemination of information under rti is now being done in a decentralized manner by the central office departments with the heads of various central office departments and the banking ombudsmen designated as central public information officers and an executive director as the appellate authority. further, senior officers have been designated as central assistant public information officers at each of our 27 regional offices and central office departments. the rbi website is

viral v acharya : understanding and managing interest rate risk at banks speech by dr viral v acharya, deputy governor of the reserve bank of india, at the fixed income money markets and derivatives association ( fiimda ) annual dinner, mumbai, 15 january 2018. * * * let me at the outset wish all of you a happy and healthy new year. thank you to fixed income money markets and derivatives association ( fiimda ) and its organizing team for inviting me to deliver this keynote address at its annual meet. i will speak today about understanding and managing better the interest rate risk at indian banks. i will start, however, by looking elsewhere and historically, often a very good place to start. in the period after the global financial crisis, bank exposures to sovereign debt have increased significantly in many economies, including advanced ones, deepening the linkage of bank balance sheets with sovereign debt. several important drivers are deemed to be at work behind this phenomenon : 1. exceptionally accommodative monetary policy in advanced economies, coupled with a general post - crisis fall in the risk appetite of global investors, created a natural demand to hold sovereign debt of safe - haven economies. 2. under basel capital regulations for banks, sovereign bond exposures continue to attract 0 % risk weight in home countries and some currency unions, besides not being subject to concentration limits. this makes sovereign bonds a more attractive investment for banks vis - a - vis other assets of similar riskiness. liquidity of sovereign bonds as well as such securities being eligible collateral for refinance by central banks only further adds to their attractiveness. 3. liquidity coverage ratio ( lcr ) regulation ( under basel - iii ) also requires banks to hold high quality liquid assets ( hqla ). though there are other securities eligible as hqla, the cost and ease of holding are the most attractive for sovereign bonds. while sovereign bonds may be safer and more liquid than other instruments at a given point of time, there is no guarantee that they will remain so as both credit risk and liquidity risk of sovereign debt are dynamic in nature, and in fact, can shift deceptively so as these risks materialize from seemingly calm initial states. sovereign debt - bank nexus and eurozone sovereign debt crisis the potential negative impact of sovereign debt - bank nexus and the need for addressing it has attracted much international attention, particularly in europe. exposures of resident banks to domestic sovereign debts in countries that faced debt crisis ( greece,