information and analytical requirements have become more diversified with added emphasis on financial stability. with structured monetary policy reviews becoming based on labour bureau data. bis central bankers ’ speeches more frequent, the need for high quality and frequent forward looking information has increased. at the same time, application of statistics in solving operational issues has gained increasing importance. these developments have contributed to the demand for trained statisticians across the departments of the bank. the department, being the second largest pool of statisticians after isi in the country, must rise to the occasion to serve the organisation better. second, as central bank of the country, we have the responsibility of providing a sizable part of macro - financial statistics. our publications have a standard that provides confidence to data users. even for secondary data like price statistics, users prefer to consult rbi publications. therefore, the responsibility of maintaining data quality, timeliness and making data meaningful inevitably falls on dsim. the department should make greater use of technology to validate and improve data quality. third, there are some surveys on macroeconomic changes which have not progressed to our desired level of satisfaction. we have made a beginning on collection of data on trading sector and employment opportunities of fresh graduates. but we need to expedite and bring out these survey results soon. another important indicator which provides early signs of overall economic activity is retail sales. a quarterly survey on retail sales across cities may be initiated with the help of regional offices. fourth, the department is involved in various data gap and statistical measurement issues through its participation in various committees within and outside the rbi. one particular issue, that has received renewed attention across the globe in view of the complexity of inflation dynamics, is measurement of prices – commodity prices, consumer prices and asset prices. in recent years, there is greater institutional effort for improving measurement of prices in india. we have a new cpi ( rural, urban and combined ) now. the base of wpi was also revised. there is, however, considerable scope for improving the coverage and reporting of prices data besides research on measurement of prices and inflation, in terms of commodities / asset classes, stages of production as well as various sectors and regions. now that we have a more representative cpi series, institutional efforts need to be directed towards compilation of a producers price index ( ppi ) as well as a service price index. fifth, regional market intelligence or statistical intelligence plays a pivotal role in providing important inputs to monetary policy making. for example, the bank of england ( bo

ordinated direct investment survey ( cdis ), extension of master office file ( mof ) with population census and economic census, development of service price and production index for banking service, construction of house price index, collation of time series data on rural wages1, system of loan registration numbers ( lrns ) for ecbs under automatic route. the research activities of the department encompass economic measurement, analysis, modelling and forecasting of economic growth, inflation, corporate performance and other macroeconomic indicators and capturing economic agents ’ response to expected macro developments for forward looking monetary policy formulation. based on various univariate and multivariate models, growth and inflation projected path is presented in the form of fan charts. with inflation running higher than rbi ’ s comfort level for the last two years, the analysis of growth - inflation trade - off carried out by the department was particularly useful for calibrating monetary policy actions. the surveys conducted by the department particularly on macroeconomic changes continue to provide valuable inputs for forward looking monetary policy formulation. these include industrial outlook survey ( ios ), order books, inventories and capacity utilisation survey ( obicus ), credit conditions survey ( crcs ), inflation expectations survey of households ( iesh ), consumer confidence survey ( ccs ) and survey of professional forecasters ( spf ). key findings of most of these surveys are now published on the rbi website simultaneously with the macroeconomic and monetary developments every quarter. this has increased visibility of our survey output and has improved considerably the timeliness in dissemination of survey results. i am sure availability of these surveys now in public domain will spur research in these areas. understanding asset price developments has gained increasing importance, especially after the global financial crisis. in this context, the department has made considerable progress in compiling house price index ( hpi ) based on registration price. the coverage has increased to nine cities now. regional offices of dsim are making important contribution towards this. further, in order to complement this, the department has introduced an asset price monitoring system ( apms ) based on housing loan account information as available with banks. financial stability analysis is another important focus area of rbi. i am happy to note that the department is making important contribution in this area by providing inputs such as financial stress indicators and asset prices. notwithstanding the achievements, let me share a few challenges for the department going forward. first, in the wake of financial crisis, quality and timely availability of statistics has become essential. the