Banks need to make loans affordable: FM at SBI meet
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said people were finding current interest rates “very stressful” and urged banks to make them affordable.
Speaking at an event organised by SBI, the Minister said at present, India required industry to ramp up and invest in new facilities. She added that lowering lending rates could help achieve the “Viksit Bharat” aspiration.
Last week, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal urged the RBI to cut interest rates to boost economic growth. He suggested looking through food prices, while deciding on monetary policy.
Meanwhile, the consumer price inflation has overshot the RBI's comfort level of six per cent, as the 6.2 per cent reading for October dashed hopes of a rate cut soon. Sitharaman said a set of three or four perishable commodities was driving the headline inflation, while the rest of the core items were at manageable levels of three or four per cent.
Addressing concerns about a slowdown in growth, Sitharaman assured people that the government was fully aware of domestic and global challenges. She said that a slew of high-frequency indicators are pointing to strong activity on the ground.
Proactively monitor portfolios: RBI Governor
- RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das has asked banks to proactively monitor their portfolios, identify areas of over-concentration, & take preemptive measures to address potential risks.
- At the Conference of Directors of Private Sector Banks, he asked bank boards to strengthen internal governance framework to curb unethical practices and expressed concerns over instances of banks misclassifying complaints as “customer queries”. PTI
