Central board of RBI takes stock of current economic situation

NEW DELHI:  The central board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) met on Friday to discuss the current economic scenario, continued global and domestic challenges and various areas of operations of the central bank. The meeting was held under the chairmanship of RBI governor Shaktikanta Das.

It was the 590th meeting of the central board. The board also discussed the working of subcommittees of the central board and the local boards and reviewed the recent policy measures taken by the central bank to mitigate the adverse impact of Covid-19 on the economy.

Deputy governors Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra, M Rajeshwar Rao, and T Rabi Sankar and other directors of the central board Satish K Marathe, S Gurumurthy, Revathy Iyer and Sachin Chaturvedi attended the meeting. Tarun Bajaj, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs and Debasish Panda, Secretary, Department of Financial Services also attended the meeting. Meanwhile, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the RBI kept the interest rates unchanged in its last meeting in August.

The repo rate has been kept at 4% and the reverse repo rate or the RBI’s borrowing has been unchanged at 3.35%. High inflation and uncertain growth scenario will likely force the policymakers to continue on a wait-and-watch mode for more cues. To tide over the crisis due to Covid-19 second wave, the central bank on Friday extended the on-tap TLTRO (targeted long-term repo operations) scheme.