India must drive growth without depending on rate cuts: Viral Acharya

10 Dec 2020 Evaluate

Terming the current 4 percent midpoint on price-rise as a ‘reasonable target’, former Deputy Governor of RBI Viral Acharya has said that revising up inflation bands for the central bank will hurt the poor. He also said India has to devise ways of pushing up growth in a structural manner and not by ‘pump-priming’ measures like easy credit and easy liquidity. It can be noted that revising up the inflation target can help the RBI deliver more rate cuts to address the concerns on growth.

Acharya has stated that fearing inflation to go up higher in the immediate future, the RBI opted for a status quo in rates at recently bi-monthly policy review, the third consecutive time that it has chosen this route despite the GDP in contraction mode. He noted that those pitching for a 6 percent inflation should get into poor man's shoes for a day to see how price rise pinches and finally impacts his consumption.  He said ‘when food and fuel are actually at very very high levels of inflation, not just broadbased inflation which is also high in India at present, actually these people (poor) have to seriously constrain their consumption basket’.

He further said ‘my sense is that unfortunately the story of growth and inflation trade-off in india has become one of the rich and the urban economy, its actually not paying enough attention to ensuring that the basic levels of (poor man's needs).’ It can be noted that the present 4 per cent target with a 2 percentage point leeway on either side is coming to an end in March. He added that the actual inflation has been overshooting for the last few months, leading to the status quo in rates by the RBI, which is disappointing many pro-growth voices.

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