NEW DELHI (CU)_As India continues to recover from the deadly second wave of COVID-19 which overwhelmed the healthcare system, the Reserve Bank of India expanded its version of the quantitative easing program aimed at spurring economic activity. Nevertheless, the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, which met earlier this month, decided to leave the benchmark repurchase rate unchanged.
According to the minutes of the MPC’s meeting which was released on Friday, the reason for this is that the second wave of the pandemic has necessitated urgent policy interventions and therefore, the top monetary policy makers have decided to prioritise economic growth concerns while downgrading its inflation goal to a secondary position. “The second wave of COVID-19 has altered the near-term outlook, and policy support from all sides — fiscal, monetary and sectoral — is required to nurture recovery and expedite return to normalcy,” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das was cited as saying during the meeting. “The dent on economic activity due to the second wave of the virus has necessitated the continuation of monetary measures to support the process of economic recovery to make it durable.”
Currently, the central bank projects the economy of the South Asian nation to expand by…
