Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das Thursday projected retail inflation to be at 5.2 per cent in 2023-24, lower than the forecast of 5.3 per cent announced in the February 2023 policy. The target for consumer price index (CPI) based inflation is 4 per cent and the RBI will work towards achieving it, Das told reporters during a post-policy interaction.
As of now, the Indian banking system remains sound and healthy with strong capital and liquidity positions, improving asset quality, better provisioning coverage along with the improved profitability, RBI’s Deputy Governor M K Jain said. I would like to add that the prudential regulations across the commercial banks are uniformly applied whether it is SLR (statutory liquidity ratio) , CRR (cash reserve ratio), LCR (liquidity coverage ratio), NSFR (net stable funding ratio) IFR (investment fluctuation reserve) and the stress testing. So, there is no differentiation just because of the sheer size of the asset of the bank.
With regard to decoupling from the US Fed policy, it has never been so. For some reason, sections of the market have been seeing it that way. I have been stressing repeatedly that our monetary policy is determined primarily by domestic factors. Therefore, we were never really coupled with the US Fed’s actions
We have given our forecast. It’s for you to interpret whether we are over-optimistic. We are always prudent in our approach and are on the conservative side like any other central bank. At this point of time, we do believe that these (real GDP growth of 7 per cent in FY23 and 6.5 per cent in FY24) are likely numbers. The high frequency indicators and the economic activity continues to be resilient. Overall, we are optimistic about the Indian economy.
With so many uncertainties, it’s not possible to make certain assumptions and say that if those assumptions work out, I will act accordingly. I would rather wait. As in a game of chess, we keep on thinking about our forward moves and we will act when the time arises.
The average inflation for the fiscal 2023-24 is 5.2 percent and the RBI’s target for retail inflation is 4 per cent. The RBI’s stance on withdrawal of accommodation is to ensure that inflation progressively aligns with the target. So therefore, we have to keep in mind that 4 percent is the target and we will work towards that.
