BUDGET



RBI govt transfer falls sharply to Rs 30,307 crore, may impact budget math

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will transfer Rs 30,307 crore as surplus to the government for fiscal ended March 2022 down 69% from the Rs 99,126 crore in the year ended March 2021 and lower than the Rs 74,000 crore budgeted by the government for the current fiscal.

The transfer amount was finalised at the central bank board meeting which approved the annual report for last fiscal, RBI said in a release.

Economists said the fall in the transferable surplus is because of the increased interest the RBI had to pay banks which parked their surplus liqudity in the reverse repo window.

"In FY22 due to heavy investment of RBI in reverse repo auctions which at an average of Rs 6 to 7 lakh crore a day at an average cost of even 3.5% would mean a cost of Rs 21000-24500 cr. This would have accrued to the government as surplus would have been higher," Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda said in a note.

The shortfall from the government's budgeted estimates will have to be made up from dividend from public sector institutions, Sabnavis said.

" For the year the government is targeting Rs 74,000 cr approx. as dividend/surplus from RBI, PSBs(public sector banks) and other public financial institutions. This will mean that a large part of profit of PSBs and PIs (public institutions) will have to be transferred to make good this number or else there will be a slippage," Sabnavis said.

The board also decided to keep the contingency risk buffer at 5.50% at the lower end of the range according to RBI's economic capital framework (ECF). The buffer is carved out of the surplus funds with RBI at the end of the fiscal and is a specific provision meant for meeting unexpected and unforeseen contingencies, including depreciation in the value of securities, risks arising out of monetary/exchange rate policy operations, systemic risks and any risk arising on account of the special responsibilities enjoined upon the Reserve Bank.

Details of RBI's account will be available when the central bank releases its annual report in the next few days.

The RBI board also reviewed the current economic situation, global and domestic challenges and the impact of recent geopolitical developments.

Besides governor Shkatikanta Das all four deputy governors, Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra, M. Rajeshwar Rao and T. Rabi Sankar also attended the meeting.

Other directors of the central board, Satish K. Marathe, S. Gurumurthy, Revathy Iyer and Sachin Chaturvedi along with economic affairs secretary Ajay Seth, financial services secreatry Sanjay Malhotra also attended the meeting.

Team Edu-Visor