NEW DELHI, Jan 15 (AFP-NT) - India's 1991 market reforms have propelled the economy onto a fast track, with New Delhi motivated by trying to increase consumer satisfaction, the head of the country's central bank said Saturday. "We are firmly set on a higher growth path," Chakravarthy Rangarajan, chief of the Reserve Bank of India told a meeting of the India-Canada Joint Business Council. "The reforms have begun to yield results," he said. Rangarajan said 31 foreign banks with 161 branches have been operating in India since 1991, taking advantage of a ruling that allows foreign institutions to hold a 20 percent stake in private banks. India's reforms aim to end state control in key sectors, ease foreign investment and currency repatriation and remove the fetters of four decades of quasi-socialist government regulations. ach/sc 131455 AFP /AA1234/131357 GMT JAN 96

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