MPC differs over growth trajectory
MUMBAI: The pace of economic recovery, inflation expectations and output gap dominated discussions at the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) latest meeting, minutes released on Friday showed. This was the MPC’S first meeting after new members Jayanth R Varma, Ashima Goyal and Shashanka Bhide joined the committee.
While Reserve Bank of India deputy governor Michael Patra and executive director Mridul K Saggar expressed worries that recovery will be slow if the economy continues to contract, governor Shaktikanta Das and Bhide were optimistic about a strong revival before the end of the fiscal. At its October 7-9 meeting, the MPC kept the key lending rate unchanged at 4% and voted to maintain its accommodative policy stance during the current financial year, and into the next financial year.
Patra called for pragmatic caution, despite sequential improvement in some high-frequency indicators. He said it may take years for the economy to regain lost output. “If the NSO’S provisional estimates for Q2 that are expected at the end of November corroborate at least the direction of these forecasts, India has entered a technical recession in the first half of the year for the first time in its history,” Patra said. “Nonetheless, if the projections hold, the level of GDP would have fallen approximately 6% below its preCovid level by the end of 2020-21, and it may take years to regain this lost output. There is also an anecdotal sense that the economy’s potential output has fallen, and the post- Covid growth trajectory will look very different from what has been recorded so far,” he said.
Saggar said the output gap—a measure of the difference between an economy’s actual and potential output—will close only towards the end of the fiscal year. “The GDP is likely to contract close to the double-digit mark in Q2 2020-21. A range of model-based exercises, as well as my judgment superimposed on these, suggest that output gap in terms of levels of GDP will close only towards the end of 2021-22,” he said. Das was more optimistic about a strong rebound by next year. Varma, the only one who voted against an accommodative stance, explained the need to spell out forward guidance more clearly.