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The Reserve Bank’s monetary policy for the year 2013-14 had no surprises for the market and no sermons to the Government.
The policy was on the expected lines, but the tone of the Reserve Bank was a bit diffident on the fast growth prospects of the economy.
Based on the parameters, that is suppressed inflationary pressures, sluggish growth in GDP, worsening balance of payment situation particularly the current account deficit, liquidity constraints in the economy which have not shown any encouraging signs of improvement, the Reserve Bank just reduced the repo rate by 25 basis points from 7.5 per cent to 7.25 per cent.
Consequent to this change, the reverse repo rate and the Marginal Standing Facility would remain at 6.25 per cent and 8.25 per cent respectively.
The effectiveness of monetary policy depends on its transmission, through the banks, which however has been proving to be ineffective of late.
The policy measures, particularly the reduction of CRR and repo rate effected since 2010, did not translate into reduction of lending rate to customers except perhaps for a very marginal adjustment of less than 0.5 per cent to a segment of borrowers.
Even in respect of the latest reduction of 0.25 per cent in repo rate, the bankers have expressed their inability to pass on the benefit to customers.
Over a period, the banks have become greedy and changed their business profile keeping an eye on profitability ignoring the deposit customers and the borrowers engaged in physical production of goods and infrastructure.
They keep an eye on retail and well-off customers and encourage auto loans, housing loans and other consumption loans which were in the non-priority list in the olden days.
Banks’ tendency to maintain NIM at around 3.5 per cent has been persisting despite the Governor’s exhortation to reduce it to a reasonable level and this coupled with ease of doing business more with borrowed funds than mobilised deposits has been forcing the banks to keep away from productive loans.
The problem of non-performing loans adds to the banks aversion to venture into risky loans and given an opportunity they avoid credit risk by escaping manufacturing loans. The human resources of the banks have also not been attuned to go into productive loans with adequate training on appraisal, follow-up and supervision of loans.
Making life easy has been the broader philosophy and monetary policy transmission is having a very low priority in the name of risk management and maximisation of profit, is what is seen to be in practice.
While apprehending on the inability to ease monetary policy given the poor economic scenario, the Governor in his guidance note for the period 2013-14, has, however, cautioned that “the monetary policy action by itself cannot revive growth and it needs to be supplemented by efforts towards easing the supply bottlenecks, improving governance and stepping up public investment alongside continuing commitments to fiscal consolidation”.
This is an explicit message to the Government that the RBI has its own limitations to give a boost to the economy which has been showing sluggishness thanks to policy paralysis, governance standards and dwindling confidence in the system.
This policy statement implicitly indicates that a lot remains too be done by the Government to put back the economy on growth trajectory.
The highlight of this year’s policy is that the Reserve Bank has brought in a regulatory measure in respect of unhedged portion of the foreign currency exposure of corporates which has been long overdue.
This will have some impact on banks profitability and capital adequacy areas, but it will certainly help to improve the health of the corporates and forex market in the long run.
The overall message one can infer from this policy is that RBI can think of easing monetary policy further only if inflation is brought under threshold level and other requirements which basically come under the domain of the Government to give a thrust to the growth of the economy are in place.
A genuine concern well brought out.
(The author is a consultant. Views expressed are personal)
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