RBI Governor's Address LIVE Updates: RBI Cuts Reverse Repo Rate From 4 to 3.75%, Banks Told Not to Declare Dividends Till Further Notice

RBI Governor’s Address LIVE Updates: Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das today announced a cut in the reverse repo rate from 4% to 3.75%. Addressing the media, Das said on April 14, International Monetary Fund released its global growth projections, revealing that in 2020, the global economy is expected to plunge into the worst recession since ‘The Great Depression’.

“For 2020-21, International Monetary Fund projects sizable reshaped recoveries, close to 9 percentage points for the global GDP. India is expected to post a sharp turnaround & resume its pre-Covid, pre-slowdown trajectory by growing at 7.4% in 2020-21,” Das said.

The Governor began his address by quoting Mahatma Gandhi, saying: ‘In the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.’ Appreciating the frontline workers, Das said the RBI was doing whatever it could do to steepen the curve, even as he said India was one of the few countries that would cling on to some kind of growth.

The rupee fell 0.55 per cent to a new record low of 76.86 against the US dollar on Thursday, while the equity indices have been on a see-saw in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak losing over 30 per cent since January.

“Watchout for the RBI Governor @DasShaktikanta address live at 10.00 am today (April 17, 2020),” RBI said in a tweet. This will the second time that the governor will be addressing the media since the nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 25.

On March 27, RBI held a historic pre-term MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting wherein the repo rate was cut by a record 75 basis points. The repo rate was reduced to a 15-year-low of 4.40 per cent and was also the steepest cut since October 2004.

The same day, the central bank cut the cash reserve ratio by 100 bps to 3 per cent apart from announcing various measures to boost liquidity in the system.

There were calls that the 75 bps cuts was not sufficient and that RBI could go for more rate cuts and liquidity measures. Many brokerages had said RBI could slash the lending rates by another 100 bps.

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