The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)Reserve Bank of India is considering monthly release for the balance of payments (BoP) data, Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta said on Wednesday.
“We are working on the monthly (data release)… the rationale is to give better and more data,” she said. Speaking at an event conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Gupta highlighted the central bank’s commitment to improving the timeliness and frequency of its statistical outputs. Currently, BoP data is shared quarterly.
“Traditionally, certain data sets are published with a lag of up to 90 days. This delay has now been reduced to 60 days, and the RBI is working to shorten it further,” she said. “The RBI aims to release monthly BoP statistics, albeit at a slightly more aggregated level, with a lag of around 40 days.”
Rationale behind higher frequency reporting
This step is crucial because BoP captures the country’s transactions with the rest of the world with regard to trade, capital flows, and foreign exchange reserves. In a global environment marked by volatile capital movements and shifting trade balances, more frequent updates will allow policymakers, businesses, and investors to anticipate risks and opportunities with greater agility.
The RBI is also expediting reporting timelines from banks and corporates while streamlining internal processes to achieve this. The monthly data will align with the IMF’s updated BPM7 (7th edition of the Integrated BoP and International Investment Position Manual) framework, ensuring international comparability and credibility.
Expanding the data scope
Gupta highlighted that the RBI’s statistical database has grown to nearly 20,000 data series, spanning the real economy, financial markets, and public finances. This expansion mirrors the increasing complexity of India’s economic landscape and the need for granular, real-time information. She emphasised that the RBI is not merely a custodian of data, but an active architect of new series that can better capture the evolving forms of financial intermediation and macroeconomic trends.
She pointed out that while earlier data focused primarily on bank credit, the new series incorporates flows from non-bank intermediaries such as NBFCs, primary dealers, and other financial institutions. By publishing this data monthly, the RBI aims to present a more comprehensive picture of how credit is reaching the economy, reflecting the growing importance of non-bank channels in the financial system.
On RBI’s forecasting practices, she said, “While minimising the forecast errors is important, there is no systematic bias in the forecast… As far as the growth is concerned, again we use a variety of approaches and models.”
Gupta explained that policy formulation requires forward-looking expectations of inflation and growth. The central bank employs structural models, time series approaches, and professional forecaster inputs to minimise errors and avoid systematic bias.