After a surprise rate cut of 50 basis points from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), government has said that it will review the interest rate on small savings, like PPF and Post Office deposits, to bring them in line with market rates. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, welcoming the 50-basis-point cut in repo rate by the central bank, said that the decision of the Reserve Bank of India will significantly provide policy support to the real economy and help in the recovery process and indicated that the returns on small saving products could come down in line with the overall reduction in interest rates, he said the government will review the interest rate as well as all other aspects of these schemes.
RBI in its policy review had pointed that the median base lending rates of banks have fallen by only about 30 basis points despite extremely easy liquidity conditions. This is a fraction of the 75 basis points of the policy rate reduction during January-June, even after a passage of eight months since the first rate action by the RBI. Banks have, in the past, been reluctant to transmit the entire policy rate cut by RBI to borrowers with small saving schemes offering interest rates between 8.7 per cent and 9.3 per cent.
Earlier, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das too had said that the government will undertake review of small saving interest rate also. He said this was being done in response to the 0.5 per cent cut in key lending (repo) rate announced by the Reserve Bank. However, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian has said that the government would undertake the review in the broader context to see what the rates are and who was benefiting from these rates.
Smalls saving schemes include Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (MIS), Public Provident Fund (PPF), Post Office Time Deposit Scheme, Senior Citizen’s Savings Scheme, Post Office Savings Account, and Sukanya Samriddhi Accounts. Currently, most one-year deposit schemes of public sector banks fetch 8.25-8.5 per cent. The average return of most small savings schemes is around 8.5 per cent.
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