The Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Friday, reviewed the various areas of operation of the central bank, the current economic situation, and global and domestic challenges, including the overall impact of current global geopolitical crises.

The last meeting of the Central Board was held on February 14 before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to an article, ‘State of the Economy’, in the RBI’s latest monthly bulletin, the ongoing geopolitical crisis has heightened the uncertainty clouding the global macroeconomic and financial landscape even as the world economy struggles to recover from the pandemic.

As the conflict escalates, oil and other commodity prices are blazing to multi-year highs, and financial markets are on edge, driven by massive sell-offs, according to the article put together by senior RBI officials.

“Amid these testing times, the Indian economy is experiencing spillovers as it recovers from the third wave of the pandemic.

“Consumer and business confidence are rising, alongside improvement in demand conditions. On the supply side, a resilient farm sector and a sustained retrieval in both industrial and services sectors are broadening the recovery,” said the officials.

The Board, which met at Bengaluru, discussed the Reserve Bank’s activities during the current accounting year 2021-22. It also approved the budget for the accounting year 2022-23, RBI said in a statement.

RBI Deputy Governors Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra, M. Rajeshwar Rao, T Rabi Sankar, and other Directors of the Central Board – Satish K. Marathe, S. Gurumurthy, Revathy Iyer and Sachin Chaturvedi – attended the meeting.

Ajay Seth, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, and Sanjay Malhotra, Secretary, Department of Financial Services, also attended the meeting.

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