Economics

In the history of Indian economic thought of the last 50 years, P R Brahmananda will have a secure place. His colleagues, students and readers will long remember him for what he taught them, for the help he gave them professionally and in other ways, and, in general, for the warmth and friendliness in his relations with them.

This paper attempts to study the transmission mechanism of an increase in petroleum prices on the prices of other commodities and output in India. The paper also examines the nature and the extent of 'feedback' in such a transmission mechanism and obtains evidence of bidirectional causality between oil and non-oil inflation in India.

While the rationale for raising the interest rate to defend an exchange rate under speculative attack is well grounded in economic and financial theories, empirical validation of the effectiveness of such a policy stance has generally been difficult and is shrouded with conflicting findings. In India, besides forex market interventions and use of several administrative measures, the Reserve Bank of India has occasionally resorted to the high interest rate option during major episodes of significant pressures on the external value of the rupee. An empirical assessment suggests that one standard deviation shock to the call rate leads to rupee appreciation in the very second month. Similarly, for one standard deviation shock to net interventions, the exchange rate appreciates gradually by a few paise over five months. The impulse response also suggests that in response to one standard deviation shock the exchange rate appreciates by about 8 paise in the second month, but subsequently the exchange rate depreciates gradually, more than offsetting the initial impact of the hike in interest rate.

There have been significant financial sector reforms through the 1990s. One of the major policy changes affecting the financial markets has been reduction in government's recourse to claims on loanable funds through statutory liquidity ratio as well as high levels of Cash Reserve Ratios. The central government has switched to market borrowing to finance its fiscal deficit on a larger scale than before. There is a general move towards market determined rates and flows in the financial sector. One area where administered rates are still important is the small saving instruments. The government sets these interest rates and mobilises funds for meeting the fiscal deficits at the centre and more so at the state level. If these rates were to be determined by the markets, what would happen to the interest rates in general. One argument is that the small saving rates act as a floor to the deposit rates of the banking sector and hence also determine the lending rates. If the overall balance of demand and supply of loanable funds is such that interest rates can be lower, the small saving rates do not let that emerge. Further, as interest rates decline, there would be significant gains in economic growth. This paper is an attempt to examine this viewpoint. We develop a monetarist model of the economy and assess the implications of alternative methods of financing the fiscal deficit of the government, central and states combined. The results support the view that overall interest rates would decline if the small saving rates were to be liberalised but the gains in economic growth would not be dramatic.

The mid-term review of the monetary and credit policy for the current year springs no major surprises. It has, in the main, lowered the Bank rate by 50 basis points to 6.5 per cent and proposes to bring down, over the next two months, the cash reserve ratio to 5.5 per cent from the current effective rate (taking into account various exemptions and variable reserve ratios for particular segments of liabilities) of 6.3 per cent for the banking system as a whole. It has made further refinements of the various processes of strengthening prudential regulation of the banking system. More pertinently, it serves to highlight the constraints within which monetary policy operates in India, even going to the extent of drawing explicit reference to some of the structural impediments arising from government policy.