FE Editorial : Over to government now
The Financial Express: Jan 30 2013, 02:23 IST
With RBI doing its bit by cutting repo rate 25 bps, indeed more if you keep in mind no one expected the 25 bps CRR cut, the focus is once again back to the government and what it plans to do to fix India’s growth prospects. RBI’s rate cuts, needless to say, were along expected lines given the slowing in core inflation and in economic growth—while FMCG firm HUL saw just a 5% volume growth in the latest quarter, commercial vehicles firm Ashok Leyland saw an 18% drop in net sales. Whether RBI continues to cut rates, even India’s growth prospects, depends on how the current account deficit (CAD) fares and what the supply response is—the Cabinet Committee on Investments meets today to clear hurdles in projects with bank lending of over R1,25,000 crore, and whether it succeeds will be a critical pointer to how investments grow. No one expects investments to rise just because RBI has cut rates, but as the rate cuts stimulate economic activity and this results in higher capacity utilisation—RBI says the current figure is just 73%—the investment cycle will turn.
Both investments as well as the CAD require the same thing: fixing of the fisc. And while that has a long way to go, as RBI indicated in its pre-policy macro review, the government seems a lot more serious about controlling expenditure—the extremely tight LAF of R91,000 crore this month is a result of government simply not spending. Subsidy payments, to cite one figure, rose just
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