In addition, there has been a spurt in the activities of non-banking finance corporations (NBFCs) and mutual funds over the last two decades. Deposits of NBFCs recorded an impressive growth of about 35 per cent per annnum from the mid-eighties to the middle of the nineties. In the sixties and seventies, the Unit Trust of India (UTI) was the only mutual fund. By 1999-2000, as many as 34 mutual funds were operating of which seven mutual funds were set up by public-sector banks and financial institutions. Their total resource mobilisatiuon in 1999-2000 was nearly Rs 22,000 crore, with 78 per cent of this having been mobilised by the private sector mutual funds.

The number of schedule commercial banks has gone up moderately: the number of banks offices in India expanded nearly eight-fold from 8,262 in June 1969 to 67,339 in March 2000, as a result of which the population per bank office improved from 64,000 15,000 over the same period. Both per capita deposit and per capita credit have witnessed considerable growth. While per capita deposit expanded from a mere Rs 8 in 1969 to Rs 8,247 in 1999-2000. Per capita credit expended from Rs 68 to Rs 4,705 over the same period. The increase in both these indicators was more pronounced since the latter half of the eighties.

The book-building process is becoming quite popular as this process is both time and cost effective. During 2000-2001 (April-October), 12 issues for an aggregate amount of Rs 1,256 crore have already been floated using the book-building machanism, which is 40.2 per cent of the total resources raised from the share market during this period. In 1999-2000, only four issues aggregating Rs 516 crore were floated during the entire year.

One of the basic indicators of financial development of an economy is the contribution of finance-related activitiies in real gross domestic product (GDP), that is the contribution of banking and insurance in GDP. The share of real GDP originating from finance related activities experienced a steady increase to 4.7 per cent during 1993-94 to 1998-99 from 2.2 per cent during the first half of the seventies. Within the services sector, the share of finance worked out to little over 11 per cent during the nineties.

Over the years, the stock market in the country has become strong. The number of stock exchanges increased from eight in 1971 to nine in 1980 to 21 in 1993 and further to 23 as of end-March 2000. The number of listed companies also moved up over the same period from 1,599 to 2,265 and thereafter to 5,968 in 1990 and 9,871 in March'2000. The market capitalisation at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) as a percentage of GDP at current market prices also improved considerably from around 28 per cent in the early nineties to over 45 per cent at the end of of the nineties, after witnessing a fall in certain interviewing years.

The combined debt/GDP ratio of central and state governments touched a high of 61.7 per cent of GDP in 1990-91. Since then, there has been some progress in reducing debt ratios, albeit, marked by a regress in 1999-2000 on account of exogenous factors. On the expenditure side, the total expenditure of central and state governments which averaged 27.3 per cent of GDP in the first half of the eighties and 30.1 per cent of GDP in the second half of eighties, declined to 25.2 per cent of GDP in the 1996-97 with rationalisation of expenditure, says the Reserve Bank of India in its report.