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More visuals, less text this time

BS Banking Bureau in Mumbai

More charts, more boxes, more tables and less text. And of course, more colour. This, in sum, is the Reserve Bank of India's annual report for 2001-2002. The RBI follows a July-June year.

The increasing focus seems to be on six chapters of the report: the real economy; money, credit and policy; government finances; financial markets; external sectors and monetary and credit policy operations. All these chapters have been embellished with more charts and tables.

For instance, the chapter on real economy has 27 charts this year compared with 15 last year. The chapter on money, credit and policy has 37 charts (20); government finances 34 (11) and monetary and credit policy operations 11 (2).

The rise in the number of charts is phenomenal in the chapter on financial markets, which has 48 chapters against nine last year and external sector 55 against seven.

Similarly, the use of tables also has gone up substantially. For instance, the chapter on financial markets has 16 tables this year against two last year while monetary and credit policy operations has 10 tables instead of one as was the case last year.

Over all, the number of charts in the RBI annual report has gone up nearly three times from 81 last year to 238 this year, boxes less than doubled from 24 to 39. Ditto about tables from 69 to 110.

When it comes to text of the matter, the chapters on financial regulation and supervision and RBI's human resource development and organisational matters take the cake. These two chapters have 100 and 101 paragraphs each while the rest 13 chapters have 553 paragraphs among themselves. Over all, the number of chapters have come down marginally from 781 to 752.

But the number of pages of the annual report remain virtually the same: 316 this year against 317 last year.

Out of this, the text pages this year account for 226 against 227 last year. But if all these give one the impression that brevity is the soul of RBI, one may feel a bit let down after going through the central bank speak which continues to be as vague and obtuse as ever.

So what? What it could not say directly, was conveyed through charts with a lot of colours. When it comes to growth outlook, the RBI did call a spade a spade.

But in true Jalan style, the report has kept the suspense alive till the October credit policy when the RBI will actually quantify the cut in the GDP growth projections.

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