The Reserve Bank of India on Friday said that even after battered economically due to the COVID-19 crisis, India will continue to grow at 1.9 percent during the current fiscal year.
Addressing the media digitally today, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said, "India is among the handful of countries that are projected to cling on, somewhat tenuously, to the positive growth rate of 1.9 percent. This is the highest growth rate among the G-20 economies as estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."
"India is expected to post a sharp turnaround and resume its pre-COVID growth trajectory by growing at 7.4 percent in 2021-22," he further said.
Das further stated that India's central bank has been very proactive and has been monitoring the evolving situation very closely adding that there are slivers of brightness at the domestic front among the encircling gloom.
This was the second time that the governor addressedthe media since the nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 25.
On March 27, RBI held a historic pre-term MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting wherein the repo rate was cut by a record 75 basis points. The repo rate was reduced to a 15-year-low of 4.40 percent and was also the steepest cut since October 2004.
The same day, the central bank cut the cash reserve ratio by 100 bps to 3 percent apart from announcing various measures to boost liquidity in the system.
There were calls that the75 bps cuts were not sufficient and that RBI could go for more rate cuts andliquidity measures. Many brokerages had said RBI could slash the lending ratesby another 100 bps.
