and acceptance of the cics in india with quality of data submitted by the lenders, multiplicity of cics, use of alternate data and consumer protection being the major ones. with a view to overcome these issues and challenges, rbi had set up a committee ( chairman : shri aditya puri, md, hdfc bank limited ) to examine the above issues and to also recommend a data format for furnishing of credit information to cics by credit institutions. the committee was also mandated to suggest best practices for the guidance of credit institutions in respect of usage of credit information as a part of their credit appraisal process. the final report of the committee is awaited. information into action : the essential pre - requisites 5. let me now turn to the theme of the conference “ information into action. ” what do you need for putting ‘ information into action ’? in the context of the conference, this essentially means that available credit information has to be extensively used for drawing inferences for making lending decisions. some of you might know that i have been a student of statistics ; hence, i would use an analogy from that discipline to explain under what conditions can the information be used for decision making. in statistics, if any sample data is to be used to draw some inference about the population parameters, the estimates should satisfy four basic characteristics. these are “ unbiasedness ”, “ consistency ”, “ efficiency ” and “ sufficiency ”. similarly, if the credit information has to be used for facilitating effective lending decisions, the information should also satisfy the above four important characteristics. let me explain them one by one. ( a ) unbiasedness : when i say that the information should be unbiased, it basically means that the information gathered should not be biased in favour or against a consumer, lender or a borrower. the cic should not say that an inaccurate rating was arrived due to wrong data provided by a bank. the onus is on the cics to ensure that the data that they gather is error - free and they are able to give unbiased information to their customers. ( b ) consistency : the credit worthiness of a borrower should be consistent and accurate. if one cic rates a borrower as good and the other one rates him bad, this means that the credit information system is not consistent. likewise, the rating of a borrower should not vary from one loan product to the other. ( c ) efficiency

##ly driven decline is evident in the average lead times on the purchase of new capital equipment that has kept capacity utilization at moderate levels and virtually eliminated most of the goods shortages and bottlenecks that were prevalent in earlier periods of sustained strong economic growth. but, although there doubtless have been profound changes in the way we organize our capital facilities, engage in just - in - time inventory regimes, and intertwine our newly sophisticated risk - sensitive financial system into this process, there is one important caveat to the notion that we live in a new economy, and that is human psychology. the same enthusiasms and fears that gripped our forebears, are, in every way, visible in the generations now actively participating in the american economy. human actions are always rooted in a forecast of the consequences of those actions. when the future becomes sufficiently clouded, people eschew actions and disengage from previous commitments. to be sure, the degree of risk aversion differs from person to person, but judging the way prices behave in today ’ s markets compared with those of a century or more ago, one is hard pressed to find significant differences. the way we evaluate assets, and the way changes in those values affect our economy, do not appear to be coming out of a set of rules that is different from the one that governed the actions of our forebears. hence, as the first cut at the question “ is there a new economy? ” the answer in a more profound sense is no. as in the past, our advanced economy is primarily driven by how human psychology moulds the value system that drives a competitive market economy. and that process is inextricably linked to human nature, which appears essentially immutable and, thus, anchors the future to the past. but having said that, important technological changes have been emerging in recent years that are altering, in ways with few precedents, the manner in which we organize production, trade across countries, and deliver value to consumers. to explore the significance of those changes and their relevance to the possibility of a “ new economy ”, we need to first detail some key features of our system. the american economy, like all advanced capitalist economies, is continually in the process of what joseph schumpeter, a number of decades ago, called “ creative destruction ”. capital equipment, production processes, financial and labor market infrastructure, and the whole panoply of private institutions that make up a market economy are always