The Reserve Bank’s annual ‘Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy’ is a comprehensive source of data on a range of macroeconomic and financial variables (viz., output, prices, money, banking, financial markets, public finance, foreign trade, balance of payments and select socio-economic indicators) at multiple frequencies. Researchers, analysts, and students use this resource, including its near real-time on-line version, for tracking India’s economic progress as well as for empirical research and analysis.

2. Over the years, the coverage of the Handbook has increased. The Reserve Bank’s data portal ‘Database on Indian Economy’ (weblink: https://data.rbi.org.in), which hosts the on-line version of the Handbook, has been recently enriched with several new user-friendly features, viz., standard data query engine for metadata-based data access and visual analytics, fetching select data with identifiers from reports, simultaneous data download for cross-domain economic indicators, map-integrated banking outlet locator and enhanced search facility; more user-oriented refinements are underway.

3. This present Handbook is 26th in the series. It contains 240 statistical tables, contributed by several Departments of the Bank that generate macro-financial statistics. The publication is collated by the Data Management and Dissemination Division (DMDD) in the Department of Statistics and Information Management (DSIM) under the overall guidance of Dr. Ajit Ratnakar Joshi, Principal Adviser and Shri Anujit Mitra, Adviser. Sincere efforts of the DMDD team led by Dr. Manjusha Senapati, Director, which included Smt. Jolly Roy and Ms. Prabha Jadav, Assistant Advisers, Shri Srijan Hazra and Ms. Ananya Roy, Managers, Shri Ajay Kumar, Assistant Manager and Ms. Pooja N. Nile, Assistant, ensured regular updates of the online version throughout the year as well as release of this Handbook as per the calendar.

4. Any comments or suggestions on the Handbook may be sent to the following address: The Director, DMDD, Department of Statistics and Information Management, Reserve Bank of India, C-9, 3rd Floor, Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai-400 051. Feedback can also be provided by e-mail or by accessing the ‘feedback’ link on the Bank’s data portal https://data.rbi.org.in.

(O. P. Mall)
Executive Director
September 13, 2024