Monday, May 6, 2013

Why repo rate cuts cut little ice

...................The repo rate, at the end of the day, is only the tip in the iceberg of the financial market. This is not to deny the potent symbolism and signals on the RBI’s ‘policy stance’ that it can convey. But to assume that a rate cut on about Rs 1,00,000 crore (the average sums borrowed daily through the RBI’s repo window) to pass through immediately to the banks’ total loans and advances portfolio aggregating to some Rs 53,00,000 crore is a vaulting expectation, which, to quote Shakespeare, “overleaps itself and falls on the other”.

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