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.