November 1, 2004
The Reserve Bank of India has
today released the first lot of the data series covering key macro economic
aggregates. The data can be accessed from the home page of the RBI website (www.rbi.org.in)
through the static headline 'Database
on Indian Economy.'
The database on Indian economy is an advanced mode of information
dissemination through which long time series data on several aspects of Indian
economy are made available to the public in user-friendly manner. The subject
areas covered in the database on Indian economy include data on financial sector,
real sector, financial market, external sector, public finance and corporate
finance. The list will be progressively enlarged on the basis of feedback received
and availability of relevant data series in Reserve Bank's data warehouse.
The database makes available published time series data on
these subject areas through a completely browser based software. For the convenience
of researchers, analysts and other users, the files are made available in the
form of CSV/pdf formats.
The database can be accessed in two ways through a facility
called 'Reports' which allows the users to select and view the pre-formatted
reports. This facility allows access to reports based on variables that are
predetermined and classified according to subject areas and time frequency of
available data. The users, however, will also have another option to access
the data through `data query'. This mode enables user-defined generation of
data and allows the user to choose the time period for a given report. This
facility allows the user to create new reports on variables and time periods
to be selected by him. All the data series will be accompanied with data definitions,
i.e., metadata which allow the users to view the definitions/concepts of the
underlying variables. The data definitions also provide search feature on these
terms. In addition, links are provided in various reports for accessing the
contextual metadata.
It may be recalled that as indicated in the Mid-term
Review of the Annual Policy for 2003-04 in November, 2003, an Expert Group
on Central Data Base Management System (CDBMS) was constituted under Prof. A.
Vaidyanathan to guide the process of placing the publishable part of the CDBMS
in public domain for the convenience of researchers, analysts and other users.
The Group also examined the process of release of data from the CDBMS to publish
through a link on the RBI website. The recommendations of the Vaidyanathan Group
will shortly be placed in the public domain.
It is hoped that economists, statisticians, data analysts
and market participants will find this site useful. Users are requested to send,
through the `feedback' link on the site, their feedback to make the site more
useful.
P.V. Sadanandan
Manager
Press Release: 2004-2005/464
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