A day after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Board decided to transfer surplus reserves of Rs 1.76-lakh crore to the government for 2018-19, the Congress party has accused the Centre of "looting the RBI". The Congress party on Tuesday said the amount that will be transferred to the government "is almost the exact same amount missing from Budget 2019 announcement". The party added that the move would only devastate the India economy further.
"Rs 1.76 lakh cr given to the govt by RBI is almost the same amount missing from the Budget 2019 announcement. Where was that money spent? Why was it missing from the Budget? Looting the RBI like this only devastates our economy further & reduces the credit rating of the bank," the party tweeted.
Upping the ante on the issue of cash serves transfer and the ongoing slowdown in the country, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said this was Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's "self-created economic disaster". Commenting on the reports of RBI reserve surplus transfer, Gandhi termed it like "stealing a Band-Aid from the dispensary & sticking it on a gunshot wound".
"PM & FM are clueless about how to solve their self created economic disaster. Stealing from RBI won't work - it's like stealing a Band-Aid from the dispensary & sticking it on a gunshot wound," Tweeted Gandhi.
Also read: RBI Board approves transfer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to Centre
The RBI board on Tuesday accepted the recommendations by Bimal Jalan committee and approved the transfer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the government of India. This sum will comprise of Rs 1.23 lakh crore of surplus for the year 2018-19 and Rs 52,637 crore of excess provisions identified as per the revised Economic Capital Framework (ECF) adopted at the meeting.
The surplus funds from RBI would help the government achieve its fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal. The government has set a fiscal deficit target of 3.3 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal, revised downwards from the goal of 3.4 per cent mentioned in the Interim Budget in February.
RBI, in consultation with the government, had constituted an expert committee under former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan to review the extant economic capital framework of the central bank.
Edited by Manoj Sharma
Also read: 5 areas where RBI's Rs 1.76 lakh crore surplus can be deployed