These enduring traits are embedded into our geography and culture, and will serve us well for many years. India since the early 90’s India too has been opening up since the early 1990s, although not at a uniform pace. Since independence, India had adopted an economic model that emphasised self-sufficiency, strong central planning, and the state controlling the commanding heights of the economy. By the late 1980s this model had run into difficulties. In 1991 Prime Minister Narasimha Rao started to deregulate and open up the Indian economy. Countries in Asia watched with close interest successive budgets of Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, as decisions that had hitherto been made centrally were devolved to the private sector, the Rupee was devalued, subsidies were reduced, state-owned enterprises were privatized, and industries opened up to competition and foreign participation. They looked forward to a dynamic, prosperous India, participating fully in the regional economy. But the political situation in India changed after several years, and the pace of reform slowed down, or so it seemed to those watching India from afar. However, in the last few years under the BJP government led by Prime Minister Vajpayee, not only have the reforms resumed, but a new spirit and vigour have manifested themselves across the country. Last week’s mini-budget announcements show the resolve of the government to press on with the reforms. 2  BIS Review 3/2004  India is now a fast growing economy.
Thus, additional development and modernization of the Bulgarian government securities market is expected to be achieved and its further integration into the European Union’s single market to be encouraged. This will allow by the end of next year financial institutions to freely select the place where they trade in government securities issued in Bulgaria, in compliance with the requirements under Regulation 2015/61 concerning the assessment of liquid assets in the form of government securities. This would possibly provide the prerequisites for additional diversification of the investors in Bulgarian government debt instruments. These changes are conceived in line with the debt management and financial markets security policy in the context of our future euro area membership and are necessitated by regulatory reforms at EU level. Finally, I would like to mention a project successfully completed recently. On 31 May 2016 Bulgaria subscribed to the Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Bulgaria is the 11th country worldwide to adhere to this highest tier international data dissemination standard. Adhering to this standard is the result of the joint efforts of the Bulgarian National Bank as coordinator for Bulgaria, the National Statistical Institute, and the Ministry of Finance. The BNB oversaw the adherence efforts and was responsible for developing the so-called National Summary Data Page, which is already available on the BNB website. The greater part of the new statistical indicators included in the standard are compiled by the BNB.