Uncertainty is emerging as the only certainty, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das as he emphasised on continued policy support at the December MPC meet during which members expressed concerns over spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, as per the minutes of the rate-setting panel released on Wednesday. After three days of deliberations, the six members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) on December 8 unanimously voted for status quo on policy rates for the ninth consecutive time. At the meeting, the RBI Governor said risks stalking the global economy have amplified with rapid spread of the virus mutations, including the Omicron variant, leading to countries scrambling for restrictions.
The Reserve Bank of India on Friday decided to keep benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent but maintained an accommodative stance even as the economy is showing signs of recovery after the second Covid wave.
The Indian economy recovered from the Covid-induced downturn during 2022 and is poised for further improvement in the coming quarters though downside risks emanating from geopolitical tensions, strengthening dollar and elevated inflation will continue. The positive trajectory in the growth trend and improved fundamentals will help the nation in neutralising the impact of global headwinds which are expected to have a bearing on the country's exports in the months to come. The challenges before the government and the Reserve Bank in the new year would be to arrest inflation, check declining value of rupee against US dollar and promote private investment and growth, with a view to ensure that the country remains one the fastest growing major economies of the world.
New norms to keep Raghuram Rajan out of the race.
The Reserve Bank's rate setting panel on Thursday met to finalise a report for the government on why it failed to keep retail inflation below the target of 6 per cent for three consecutive quarters since January this year, said sources. The report will be presented to the government as per the Reserve Bank of India Act, they added. The six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is headed by Governor Shaktikanta Das.
Bankers have suggested that the Reserve Bank of India lower the statutory liquidity ratio and the cash reserve ratio as the present liquidity crunch is affecting their business. During the mid-term resource management discussion with the RBI team led by Deputy Governor Rakesh Mohan, the country's top bankers said the tight liquidity condition was pushing up the cost of funds and putting further pressure on margins.
India is more insulated to Fed-related volatility than other emerging markets due to its better economic fundamentals
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday raised the benchmark lending rate by 35 basis points to 6.25 per cent in a bid to tame inflation, which has remained above its tolerance level for the past 11 months. With the latest hike, the repo rate or the short-term lending rate at which banks borrow from the central bank now has crossed 6 per cent. This is the fifth consecutive rate hike after a 40 basis points increase in May and 50 basis points hike each in June, August and September.
The Reserve Bank of India is likely to formulate guidelines on outsourcing banking activities by July to improve regulatory oversight for risk management of this segment.
Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan said the country would have no problems in meeting its oil bill in the event of a war in Iraq.
Retail inflation jumped to a 15-month high of 7.44 per cent in July as prices of vegetables and other food items spiked, according to official data released on Monday. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation was at 4.87 in June and 6.71 per cent in July 2022. Previously, high inflation was recorded at 7.79 per cent in April 2022.
India Inc on Wednesday said the Reserve Bank's move to cut interest rate by 0.50 per cent is "pro-growth" and exhorted banks to transmit the lower interest rate to borrowers to revive demand and kick-start the investment cycle.
This is not for the first time that the customers of the bank have faced service outage. In fact, the bank has been penalised by the Reserve bank of India (RBI) for two major outages in the past. In December, the RBI temporarily barred HDFC Bank from launching new digital banking initiatives and issuing new credit cards after taking a serious view of service outages at the lender over the last two years.
While achieving an eight per cent retail inflation rate by January 2015 is well within reach, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan notes there is a second target, of six per cent by 2016.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said the government and the central bank are in discussion with South Asian countries to have cross-border trade in rupee. He also said the central bank digital currency (CBDC) is in trial phase and the RBI is moving very carefully and cautiously on digital rupee launch. After the successful launch of the wholesale pilot, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on December 1, last year, began its retail CBDC pilot project.
Amid the rupee declining against the US dollar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said the Indian currency is relatively better placed than other global currencies against the greenback. Emerging market currencies have been falling against the dollar amid geopolitical tensions in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war, concerns over growth, high global crude prices, sustained inflation and central banks worldwide adopting hawkish monetary policy approach. "We are relatively better placed. We are not a closed economy. We are part of the globalised world.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Thursday said financial inclusion will continue to be a "policy priority" for the central bank to make the post-pandemic recovery more equitable and sustainable. The Reserve Bank of India will very soon be coming out with the first financial inclusion index, which will assess progress in terms of access, usage and quality, Das said, while speaking at the Economic Times Financial Inclusion Summit. It is the responsibility of all stakeholders to ensure that the financial ecosystem (including the digital medium) is inclusive and capable of effectively addressing risks like mis-selling, cybersecurity, data privacy and promoting trust in the financial system through appropriate financial education and awareness, he added.
Deputy Governor K C Chakrabarty says monetary policy to ease once inflation comes down.
The BJP MP said the guidelines for grant of licences were 'brazenly flouted'.
Among the Sensex firms, Bajaj Finance emerged as the biggest gainer by climbing 2.95 per cent. Tata Motors, Bajaj Finserv, IndusInd Bank, Sun Pharma, Mahindra & Mahindra, State Bank of India, Larsen & Toubro, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Maruti, Reliance Industries and Bharti Airtel were the other major winners. HCL Technologies, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Tech Mahindra and Titan were among the laggards.
Startup founders need to sit up and think about how not to take stardom for granted and how not to disappoint their fans who have stood in long queues for those precious selfies with popular entrepreneurs, notes Nivedita Mookerji.
In August, the Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das held a meeting with chief executive officers/ managing directors (CEOs/ MDs) of large non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs). The discussions included diversifying borrowing sources for NBFCs and housing finance companies (HFCs) to contain increasing reliance on bank borrowing, risks associated with high credit growth in retail segment in unsecured loans, prioritising IT upgrades and cyber-security, improving provisioning, monitoring of stressed exposures and slippages, ensuring robust liquidity and asset-liability management, ensuring transparency in pricing, creating robust grievance redress mechanisms.
Maintaining 4 per cent inflation is appropriate for India as targeting a lower rate could impart deflationary bias to the monetary policy, said a Reserve Bank paper. Under the current dispensation, the RBI has been mandated by the government to maintain retail inflation at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side. The paper, authored by RBI Deputy Governor Michael Debabrata Patra and another official Harendra Kumar Behera, has found a steady decline in trend inflation to 4.1-4.3 per cent since 2014.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das had stumped the market in the previous two policies - in August and in October - first with action and then with words. In August, it was the introduction of an incremental cash reserve ratio (I-CRR) to take out excess liquidity, which took the markets by surprise. In October, there was no action. Rather, what is known as "open mouth operation", Das' comment that the central bank might conduct open market operations (OMOs) by selling bonds tempered the euphoria in the bond markets after JP Morgan's inclusion of India in its Emerging Market Bond Index.
Rau's felt the need to be where the action was.
The institute that once drew largely elite students also decided to expand its base and cater to a wider pool.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday hiked repo rate by 50 basis points to 5.90 per cent in order to control the rising inflation, keeping in line with the aggressive policies of central banks and the volatile markets prevalent across economies. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das announced the rate hike today. In the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) that started on Wednesday, five of the members of the MPC voted to hike the key lending rate, repo rate, by 50-basis points (bps).
The methodology will be announced later this week.
Rajan was speaking at a news conference.
The RBI is expected to issue only a few bank licences after completing due diligence.
The academic prize is sponsored by the Deutsche Bank Donation Fund and carries an endowment of euro 50,000.
"A time has perhaps come when we can now think of only allowing banks to acquire public deposits," Reserve Bank Deputy-Governor V Leeladhar told reporters on the sidelines of an Indian Merchants Chamber organised banking conference in Mumbai on Thursday. The number of deposit-taking NBFCs is sharply declining as also the amount of deposits with them, Leeladhar said.
Basel-III norms, proposed to be implemented from the beginning of 2013 till 2017, require the equity capital of a bank to be not less than 5.5 percent of risk-weighted loans, as per the draft guidelines issued by Reserve Bank of India.
People are availing far more of certain kinds of unsecured loans than was the case before the pandemic. Bank lending for buying consumer durables and funding of credit cards and other personal loans have risen by Rs 6.9 trillion between August 2019 and August 2023, shows a Business Standard analysis of data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). These loans are typically unsecured, which means they are provided without collateral.
The reason behind issuing new bank licences is to allow more private sector entities to set up banks
'Banks are being encouraged to lend instead of parking their resources with the RBI and earn risk-free interest income,' points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The Union Budget's focus on capital expenditure is expected to crowd-in private investment and push the GDP growth rate close to 7 per cent in the next financial year beginning April 1, said a Reserve Bank article on 'State of the Economy'. In 2023-24, capital expenditure is budgeted at Rs 10 lakh crore which will constitute 3.3 per cent of GDP. "We believe that India will decouple from macroeconomic projections of current vintage and also from the rest of the world.
When it comes to running between the wickets -- which is exactly what an FM and a governor do -- Jadeja always defers to Dhoni's larger judgement of the situation and the needs of the team, observes T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.