The Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy is a comprehensive database of macroeconomic and financial information, which has been made available in the public domain since 1998. It is also simultaneously released in electronic form on the “Database on Indian Economy (DBIE)”, the Reserve Bank's Data Warehouse (https://dbie.rbi.org.in), in which it is updated on a regular basis.

2. The Handbook for the year 2017-18, the twentieth in the series, contains 242 statistical tables, covering time series on a wide range of economic and financial indicators pertaining to national income aggregates, output, prices, money, banking, financial markets, public finances, foreign trade, balance of payments and select socio-economic indicators at varying frequencies. It also incorporates presentational improvements, including format changes for some tables, introduction of new series and discontinuation of some tables for which data are no longer available.

3. The publication is brought out by a team in the Data Management and Dissemination Division (DMDD), Department of Statistics and Information Management (DSIM) under the guidance of Dr. Anil Kumar Sharma, Adviser, and comprising Dr. Yogesh Kumar Gupta, Director; Smt. Vijaya Gangadaran and Shri Hari Om Tiwari, Assistant Advisers; Shri Pankaj Kumar, Research Officer; Ms. Jyoti Kumari, Manager; Shri Rajkumar Morwal, Assistant Manager and Shri Balaji Bhanvase, Assistant. The compilation of the Handbook involved a number of officers and staff from various Departments of the Bank, viz., Department of Economic and Policy Research, Department of External Investment and Operations, Financial Markets Operations Department, Financial Markets Regulation Department, Internal Debt Management Department, Monetary Policy Department, Department of Co-operative Banking Regulation, Department of Currency Management, Department of Banking Regulation, Department of Payment and Settlement Systems and Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation. Their sincere efforts in ensuring real time updates and timely validation of reports have made this publication possible.

4. We welcome comments and suggestions on the Handbook which may please be forwarded to the following address: The Director, Data Management and Dissemination Division, Department of Statistics and Information Management, Reserve Bank of India, C-9, 3rd Floor, Bandra-Kurla Complex, Bandra (East), Mumbai 400051. Feedback may also be forwarded to us by e-mail or through a feedback button available on DBIE site.

Sd/-
(Michael Debabrata Patra)
Executive Director

September 15, 2018