RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das Talks About New Global Standards and AI at Statistics Day Conference
New Delhi [India], June 28: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is closely monitoring the development of new global standards for macroeconomic statistics, as highlighted by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das at the 18th Statistics Day Conference in Mumbai on Friday. These new standards will aid in calculating national accounts and balance of payments.
Governor Das emphasized the RBI’s focus on enhancing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques. He stated, “Global efforts are expected to culminate in new global standards for the compilation of macroeconomic statistics, especially for national accounts and balance of payments. Our team in the Reserve Bank is closely tracking these developments.”
He added, “The focus now is naturally on enhancing capacity in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques and analyzing unstructured textual data. While doing so, ethical considerations need to be addressed and biases in algorithms need to be eliminated.”
Macroeconomic statistics involve large-scale economic calculations, including inflation, national income, and GDP. The governor also noted the growing use of statistics for drawing inferences in various fields, moving beyond mere data collection to interpretation and inference, considering uncertainty levels.
The RBI is leveraging vast computing power and digital footprints to analyze expectations, sentiment indicators, and policy credibility measures from alternative data sources. Das mentioned the shift from data scarcity to data abundance, which brings new challenges and opportunities.
