Former RBI Deputy Says Not to Worry Too Much About Fed Decision

September 17, 2015 Share Print 0

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ought to push ahead with an interest rate cut at its policy meeting on September 29, even if the Federal Reserve decides to embark on a rate hiking cycle this week, says former deputy governor Subir Gokarn.

“The key driver of the Fed’s decision is going to be domestic. Similarly, the key determinant of the Indian decision on interest rates must be what domestic conditions are,” Gokarn, who is presently the director of research at the Indian arm of global think tank Brookings Institution.

“Our growth is a bit sluggish – and inflation is way, way down. I think the situation argues in favor of cutting rates,” he said.

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell short of expectations in the second quarter, reflecting a slowdown in the service sector that accounts for more than half of the $2.1 trillion economy. Growth slowed at an annual rate of 7 percent in the April-June period, down from a 7.5 percent expansion in the previous three months.

Consumer price inflation, meantime, eased to new low of 3.66 percent in August from a revised 3.69 in the previous month, largely on account of falling commodity prices.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.