Saturday, August 4, 2012

A policy rate Catch 22

..........  Duvvuri Subbarao, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is facing a Catch 22 situation currently and some catch it is. He needs to decide whether to encourage economic growth or to control inflation. Theoretically Subbarao can encourage economic growth by cutting the interest rates. But that is likely to fuel inflation as people and companies will borrow and spend more, leading to a rise in prices. He can control inflation by keeping the interest rates high. But that kills economic growth as businesses don’t borrow money to expand and people go slow on taking loans for purchasing cars, motorcycles, homes and consumer durables. This hurts businesses and slows down economic growth............

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