The Reserve Bank of India said on Friday that even after battered economically due to the Covid-19 crisis, India will continue to grow at 1.9 per cent during the current fiscal year.
“India is among the handful of countries that is projected to cling on, somewhat tenuously, to positive growth rate of 1.9 per cent. This is the highest growth rate among the G-20 economies as estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said at a digital press conference.
“India is expected to post a sharp turnaround and resume its pre-Covid growth trajectory by growing at 7.4 per cent in 2021-22,” he further said.
He also said that India’s central bank has been very proactive and has been monitoring 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 addressed the media since the nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 25.
On March 27, RBI held a historic pre-term MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting whererin the repo rate was cut by a record 75 basis points. The repo rate was reduced to a 15-year-low of 4.40 per cent 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 per cent apart from announcing various measures to boost liquidity in the system.
There were calls that the 75 bps cuts was not sufficient and that RBI could go for more rate cuts and liquidity measures. Many brokerages had said RBI could slash the lending rates by another 100 bps.