Indian Institute of Finance, has been ranked 45th, (based on ratings) by Business and Economic Data links ( of American Statistical Association) in the category of finance for maintaining Financial Database from amongst 141 organisations ranked for compiling Financial Data files World Over. Indian Institute of Finance, has also been ranked at number 66 from among 255 organisations of all categories of databases ( in Microeconomics, Labour and General Micro Economics and Finance) at the world level.

The Indian Institute of Finance, which has emerged as the leading Institute of Finance in the country is maintaing financial data base on different aspects of selected economic indicators, money and banking, international finance, international trade and industry to help researchers and policy makers

Some of the other organisations included in ranking are Ohio State's Virtual Finance Library, Financial Databases Directory, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Korea Stock Exchange, Harvard - MIT Data Centre, University of Maryland Economic data library, New York Stock Exchange, OECD, CNN, World Bank, Nasdaq Market Data, NBER, Morgan Stanley Capital International and IFC etc.

B & E datalinks links to economic and financial data sources of interest to economists and business statisticians. This project , B & E datalinks , sponsored by the Business and Economics ( B & E) Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association ( ASA) provides users with a comprehensive set of links to data sites on the Web along with a user based assessment of the quality of each site .

uld provide a great motivation to the intelligentsia of this university, who are gifted with the treasure of knowledge, and charged with the responsibility of building human resource appropriate to the needs of the country. Thirdly, I personally knew Professor K.S. Mathur for a long time since mid seventies. My long association with him in different capacities has impressed me most for his admirable capabilities. He was an academician and a gentleman par excellence. I wonder as to what extent I would be able to justify this great responsibility of delivering this memorial lecture. It is a very difficult task and a great responsibility. However, it would be my endeavor to be up to the mark as far as possible or to the expectations of the organizers and galaxy of intelligentsia who is gathered here to pay their tribute to Professor K.S Mathur.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my colleagues at Indian Institute of Finance, Professor Aman Agarwal, Mr. Deepak Bansal, Senior Lecturer, and Ms. Yamini Agarwal, Lecturer, for their assistance in preparation of this paper. I would like to mention that the paper is developed using vast material including World Bank Report, World Investment Report of United Nations, IMF Reports and RIS report on South Asia Development & Cooperation Reports. However, for all errors and omissions, I am solely responsible.

Deepak Bansal
Press Secretary