RBI

International Confidence In India At All-Time High: RBI Govnr

International confidence in India is at an all-time high and confidence among investors is growing, said Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das.

“There is growing confidence on India and I think the international confidence on India is perhaps at an all-time high,” Das told ANI, on the sidelines of the ongoing World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Speaking about RBI’s growth projection for India for 2023-24 and subsequent growth estimates put out by the National Statistical Office, the latter pegged higher than that of what RBI did, Das said, “So, when we said 7 per cent for the current year, there were a lot of opinions outside that the RBI is overprojecting.”

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) during its December monetary policy review meeting raised its growth forecast for the current financial year by 50 basis points to 7 per cent from an earlier estimate of 6.5 per cent.

The National Statistics Office in its first advance estimates projected the country’s economy to grow 7.3 per cent in the current financial year 2023-24, remaining the fastest-growing major economy.

“I said that for the current financial year, RBI’s growth projection was 7 per cent. The NSO (National Statistics Office) has said 7.3 per cent. So, when we said 7 per cent for the current year, there were a lot of opinions outside that the RBI is overprojecting. But in reality, the NSO has said 7.3 per cent for the current year and for FY 2024-25, what I mentioned is that my sense is that India’s GDP growth will touch 7 per cent,” Das said.

India’s economic activity has sustained its strong momentum with both urban and rural demand supporting growth. The strong thrust by the government on capital expenditure coupled with signs of pick up in private investment and healthy aggregate demand conditions, are expected to lift the real GDP growth, Das earlier said at a Luncheon Session organized by Confederation of Indian Industry on the topic ‘High Growth, Low Risk: The India Story’ as a part of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2024.

He further added that amid a challenging global macroeconomic environment, India presents a picture of growth and stability.

Highlighting the reasons behind India’s emergence as the beacon of growth, Das stated that the decisive and timely monetary policy actions of the Reserve Bank of India through appropriate policy actions and liquidity measures have helped India to achieve a quick and sustained recovery.

These actions have been supplemented by structural reforms in the areas of taxation, banking, ease of doing business, and boosting physical and digital infrastructure announced by the government in the last few years, which together have boosted the medium- and long-term growth prospects of the Indian economy.

Commenting on the global headwinds, Das noted that the recent heightened uncertainty has resulted in emerging market (EM) economies being at the receiving end of excessive volatility in the US dollar and bond yields.

“In such a situation, the EM economies which have their domestic challenges cannot be held hostage to international financial cycles. EM economies have to act to safeguard their interests. Accordingly, the multilateral institutions could do well to take a more nuanced and balanced view of policy perspective of the EM economies,” he added.

On the rising prowess of India’s Fintech sector, the RBI Governor said that the Fintech ecosystem in India has tremendously improved, with the adoption rate of Fintech in India rising to 87 per cent which is well above the global average of 67 per cent. India’s Fintech market is projected to reach USD 150 billion by 2025, a significant leap from USD 50 billion in 2021, he added. (ANI)

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COVID RBI

Indian Banking System Well-Placed To Support Growth: RBI Governor

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Thursday that India’s banking sector as a whole has emerged stronger from the unprecedented challenges of the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent geopolitics.

Today, the Indian banking system is well-placed to support India’s growth story in the years ahead, Das said.

All key indicators of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs)–capital adequacy, asset quality, and profitability–have shown improvement in the last four years, noted the RBI Governor, addressing the Mint BFSI summit in Mumbai.

“The credit growth has now become broad-based and backed by the strong fundamentals of the financial institutions. The financial indicators of non-banking financial companies are also in line with that of the banking system as per the latest available data,” Das asserted.

Not very long ago, the Indian banking sector was beset with a host of issues, including high levels of non-performing assets (NPAs), while the returns on assets and equity were in a negative zone.

Eleven banks were under Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) as of the end of June 2018, Das said.

“Even as we were coping with the stress in the financial sector, the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the year 2020 came as a shocker, which led to major disruptions across all sectors,” he contended.

Against that backdrop, during the last five years, the central bank took a series of initiatives on the regulatory and supervisory fronts, while banks themselves, to their credit, responded to the challenges by strengthening their internal defence mechanisms.

To provide immediate debt service relief to borrowers whose income-generating ability was impaired by the lockdowns, a moratorium on repayment of loans was provided to all eligible borrowers, initially for a period of three months, which was subsequently extended by another three months, taking the total to six months from March 2020 to August 2020.

Das said that as a result of these concerted efforts, there has been a gradual and consistent turnaround in the banking system, despite the multiple headwinds emanating from COVID-19, geo-political conflicts and sharp monetary policy tightening across the world.

In the US, notably, one of the most prominent lenders in the world of technology startups, Silicon Valley Bank, which had been struggling, collapsed on March 10, 2023, after a run on the bank by the depositors. Its closure led to a contagion effect and the subsequent shutting down of other banks.

Further, on questions often raised as to how this turnaround in the banking sector took place, Das responded by saying that it was the result of all the “good work” of various stakeholders in the system.

“Our ultimate objective is the mutual coexistence of price stability, sustained growth and financial stability that works best for the Indian economy.”

In conclusion, he said the remarkable turnaround in the Indian banking system has been a cornerstone of India’s success story in recent years. (ANI)

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