RBI tracking compilation of new macroeconomic data, for aligning Indian data with global standards

New Delhi [India], June 28 (ANI): The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is closely tracking the developments of the compilation of new global standards of macroeconomic statistics, highlighted RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, at the 18th Statistics Day Conference in Mumbai on Friday.

The governor said that the new standards will help in the calculations of the national accounts and balance of payments. He also highlighted that RBI is focusing on enhancing the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques.

“Global efforts are expected to culminate in new global standards for compilation of macroeconomic statistics, especially for national accounts and balance of payments. Our team in the Reserve Bank is closely tracking these developments,” said the governor.

He added, “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.”

The macroeconomic statistics include the calculation of the economy at a massive scale and several issues of an economy are considered like inflation, national income, GDP, etc.

The RBI governor also highlighted that the use of statistics has been ever-growing as a preferred tool for drawing inferences in diverse fields. The discipline has moved beyond the collection of facts to focusing more on interpretation and drawing inferences, taking into account the level of uncertainty.

The Reserve Bank of India is 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.

He added that the world is moving from an era of data scarcity to data abundance. The volume of digital data stored as well as the storage capacity are growing at an exponential pace, bringing forth new challenges along with new opportunities.