need for new banks in the private sector 7. the indian financial system has made impressive strides in resource mobilization, geographical and functional reach, financial viability, profitability and competitiveness, since nationalization of banks in 1969 and liberalization of economic policies since early 1990s. with the penetration of banks into the nook and corner of the country, the average population per branch office ( appbo ) declined from about 64, 000 in 1969 ( as per 1961 census ) to about a fifth of that number – 12, 400 now as per 2001 census. 8. notwithstanding the vast network of branches, a sizeable segment of population, especially the underprivileged sections of the society, have no access to formal banking services. there still exists a gap between the ever increasing demands for financial services of a growing economy and the available banking network to cater to the needs of the vast areas, which are unbanked or under - banked even today. despite the progress made over the years since nationalization of banks in 1969, the problem of financial exclusion is staggering. according to the findings of world bank global findex survey ( 2012 ), only 35 per cent of indian adults had access to formal bank account and just 8 per cent borrowed formally in the last 12 months. only 2 per cent of adult population used bank accounts to receive money ( remittances ) from members of family living elsewhere and 4 per cent received payments from the government. 9. of the 600, 000 rural habitations in the country, only about 40, 000 had been covered by the presence of brick and mortar branches of banks. with regard to financial access and penetration, india ranks low compared with oecd countries. as of 2009, india had 6. 33 branches per 100, 000 persons whereas oecd countries provided 23 – 45 branches per 100, 000 persons. 10. presently, the share of public sector banks constitutes about 72 per cent of the total banking assets in india. with the implementation of basel iii capital norms, banks will need to raise more capital. as the government ’ s share in the capital of public sector banks is close to the minimum of 51 per cent, raising of any additional capital by the public sector banks would require the government to infuse matching capital so as to maintain its minimum shareholding at 51 per cent. therefore, expansion of public sector banks into new areas would depend on the ability and willingness of the government to infuse capital. 11. the private sector banks

the quality of statistics. the new cims is also facilitating research on the indian economy, minimising reporting burden, exploiting the technological advances and improving the experience of both data providers and users. in this endeavour, we have also benefitted from guidance by external experts. our aspirational goal is to position information as a public good. looking ahead, the year 2025 has a special significance for compilation of official statistics the world over. global efforts are expected to culminate in new global standards3 for compilation of macroeconomic statistics, especially for national accounts 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches and balance of payments. our team in the reserve bank is closely tracking these developments. we are also making efforts to harness the availability of huge computing power and growing digital footprints to analyse measures of expectations, sentiment indicators and policy credibility measures from alternative data sources. let me add that the use of alternative and unconventional data sources proved to be invaluable during the most severe phases of the covid - 19 related lockdowns and restrictions. in fact, their utility extends beyond periods of crisis. data management systems need to keep pace with the use of unconventional data sources as policy inputs. while doing so, we have to be mindful of the importance of eliminating noise and capturing the signals from high frequency indicators. we are conscious that we are moving from an era of data scarcity to data abundance. the volume of digital data stored4 as well as the storage capacity5 are growing at an exponential pace, bringing forth new challenges along with new opportunities. the focus now is naturally on enhancing capacity in artificial intelligence ( ai ) and machine learning ( ml ) techniques and analysing unstructured textual data. while doing so, ethical considerations need to be addressed and biases in algorithms need to be eliminated. in the reserve bank, we have ventured into ai / ml analytics in multiple areas. under the reserve bank's aspirational goals for rbi @ 100, we aim to develop cutting edge systems for high frequency and real - time data monitoring and analysis. as professor c. r. rao, the legendary statistician, and close associate of professor mahalanobis had said : " statistics is the science of learning from data. today is the age of data revolution. " 6 i am sure that our statisticians in the reserve bank will continue to strive for excellence and meet the emerging information and research needs of our economy in its journey towards even higher levels of development. i