To create additional space, medium-term commitment must be provided to reduce the overhang of government borrowings on future growth. Synopsis A bipartisan council should be set up and granted authority to enforce a ‘comply or explain’ discipline on budgetary assumptions and attempts to obfuscate. By Viral AcharyaWith the scale of GDP contraction due to the … Read more
A pedestrian walks past the RBI building in Mumbai. Some of Acharya’s hard-hitting speeches provide a glimpse of the wide chasm between Mint Street and Delhi during his stint as deputy governor of RBI between January 2017 and July 2019 (Bloomberg image) By Ananth Narayan Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India is a collection … Read more
A shift to being a market-based economy from a nationalised system has led to simmering tensions between the Reserve Bank and the government and questions over the central bank’s independence, former RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya has said. The economist, who went back to teaching in the US after his surprise resignation from the RBI … Read more
Former RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya on Saturday said inflation is higher than expected and the rate-setting panel should “respect” its core mandate of controlling price rise at the next week’s policy review meet. The comments come even as there is an increased clamour for further rate cuts to aid the economic recovery, even as … Read more
By Raghuram RajanThe Covid-19 pandemic will create, perhaps, the most significant economic challenge for India in my memory. It does not help that GoI has allowed legacy problems to fester, leaving us ill-prepared to face the pandemic. One such problem is bad bank loans, euphemistically called ‘non-performing assets’ (NPAs).In his insightful new book, The Quest … Read more