RBI highlights govt.'s imbalances

The RBI’s annual review of its monetary policy, which is expected to be more of a ritual today rather than a newsmaker, will have little to elaborate on the central bank’s policy moves. The reasons being the RBI’s limitation so far in impacting economic and credit growth through its monetary tools and its compulsion to release liquidity by buying back bonds to support the government’s borrowing plans. The RBI in its statement of ‘Macroeconomic and Monetary Developments’ released yesterday did not shy away from projecting a cautious outlook for the Indian economy, which it said ‘continues to exhibit the persistence of less than normal sentiments’.
The RBI’s concerns are further articulated in the annual accounts of the central government which clearly show an imbalance between the components of receipt and expenditure. While the revenue receipts have almost remained stagnant in the past fiscal, the Centre relied heavily on capital receipts, particularly market borrowings.
On the expenditure front, the upcoming polls seem to have had an overbearing on the Centre’s expenditures with the expensive borrowed funds having been generously given away in the form of subsidies to appease voters. In fact as a percentage of GDP, subsidies comprised 2.5% of the country’s GDP in FY09 (1.5% in FY08), the highest in the past decade.