RBI Guv to meet industry, commerce bodies today

“Will meet the apex chambers/associations of industry and commerce tomorrow (17th January),” Das said in a tweet. This is his fifth tweet since he assumed charge as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor on December 11 last year.

The meeting becomes significant as the industry expects monetary policy easing by the central bank as the inflation is down and within control. The RBI will have its sixth bimonthly monetary policy meeting on February 7 and the industry is expecting a cut in policy rates.

Das, who replaced Urjit Patel after he suddenly resigned on December 10 following a tussle with the Central government over liquidity concerns, has been holding meetings with various groups to review the situation, unlike his predecessor.

Since joining office, Das has already held meetings with public and private sector banks, cooperative banks, MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) associations and representatives of non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).

He had recently said the central bank will continuously monitor the liquidity situation and will take need-based steps to deal with the liquidity deficit. Liquidity became a concern after infrastructure financing company IL&FS defaulted on its dues. While liquidity crunch hit the NBFC sector last September after payment defaults by IL&FS and its subsidiaries, SMEs were yet to recover from the fallout of 2016 demonetisation of high denomination currency notes and the GST roll-out in July 2017. A day after joining RBI, on Dec 12, he had said the health of PSBs, liquidity issue and maintenance of growth trajectory of economy are some of the vital issues for which he would interact with stakeholders for an internal feedback before forming a view.