0. 5 percentage point each all together, 300 basis points in less than eight months to reach a level of 2. 5 %. and that is not the end of the process. with headline inflation remaining high and core inflation even increasing, our intention is to raise interest rates still further. my expectations are that the increase we intend for our march meeting will be followed by additional increases before we reach a level which will be sufficient to bring inflation back to the trajectory towards our goal of 2 % inflation. and also continue reducing the size of our balance sheet further after the initial step we made this month, when we started to reduce the amounts of asset holdings by 15 billion euros per month. i strongly believe that our determined action will contribute to lower inflation in the euro area. * * * but to return to the topics of madis'lecture. the differences in inflation between member states are caused by other policies as well. fiscal policy is still under the jurisdiction of individual governments, and the same holds true for wage policies and for many structural policies. as madis will explain in his lecture, these are all important contributors to inflation in each member state and also a source of differences among national inflation rates. that is why it is so important to ensure that also overall policy mix and not just monetary policy is supportive to the process of lowering inflation. i will stop there and hand the floor to our guest. dear madis, over to you 2 / 2 bis - central bankers'speeches

the disbursal of educational loans by commercial banks. the educational loans outstanding amounted to rs. 27, 709 crore as at end march 2009 which increased to up to rs. 42, 808 crore as at end - march 2011 table 2 ). table 2 : educational loan of scheduled commercial banks particulars mar - 09 mar - 10 mar - 11 amount outstanding ( in rs crore ) 27709. 5 36359. 7 42808. 1 16. 3 19. 7 22. 8 no of accounts ( in lakh ) we have nominated a nodal officer at the central office of the rbi for the purpose of all educational loan issues / grievances. apart from policy formulation, as an institution also, rbi undertakes activities to educate students relating to central banking, banking and financial system. illustratively, to educate young scholars, a scheme has been introduced in which every year rbi selects a good number of scholars from different region of the country. in addition, rbi has set up research and training institution for banking technology. way forward innovations required the challenge of educating millions of young people implies that we need to scale up our educational efforts multi - fold despite having the largest number of higher education institutes in the world. mr shantanu prakash has established one more institute today but we need to create many more such centres. scaling up is not possible unless the students become successful, create value in the society and contribute back to their alma - mater or, better still, start new institutes of global standards themselves. the curriculum of some of the colleges / universities is more or less obsolete and do not equip students with the necessary skills or impart latest knowledge. if a student passes out of a chosen course, he or she should be employable as a work force. unfortunately, given the phenomenal share of lack of technical knowledge in the courses of education, students are found wanting in the desired skills and technical soundness. to address this issue, we may think of strengthening the vocational streams in schools / colleges. i urge the universities / schools / colleges to regularly revisit their curriculum by involving experts from different fields so that the curriculum can lead to knowledge development. further, why can we not use the available infrastructure more intensely? for instance, why cannot a second stream of courses, say vocational, be run in the evening / night so that the available / created infrastructure is better utilized. teachers are the most important factors for any innovative society because teachers ’