The Centre today told the Supreme Court that Swiss government has indicated its willingness to provide information on "stolen data" containing names of Indians who had allegedly stashed black money in banks there.

The government said the "development" is very significant as the Swiss government had refused to provide any information regarding it.

"Switzerland has indicated willingness to provide information in respect of cases where investigations have been carried out by the IT Department independently from what Swiss government considers as stolen data. This development is very significant because there are several cases of account holders which were investigated by the Department independently.

"Earlier the Swiss government had not agreed to provide any information in such cases on the ground that these were stolen data and have been obtained in breach of Swiss law," it said in its affidavit.

The government said the Swiss Federal Tax Administration has agreed that their counterpart authority would assist India in obtaining confirmation of genuineness of bank accounts.

"The Swiss authorities have also agreed to provide the requested information in a time bound manner or else indicate the reasons why the cases cannot be answered within the agreed timeline," the Centre said.

It told the apex court that Switzerland has also assured it of commencing talks with India for concluding an Automatic Exchange of Information Agreement between the two sides at the earliest after completion of their domestic procedures.