Raghuram Rajan Behind India's Declining Growth, Says NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar
New Delhi sep 03: With Indian medium and small scale enterprises registering a 100 percent growth in loan defaults and non-performing assets surging on a year-on-year basis, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar laid the blame on former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, stating that his policies led to industries not receiving credits from banks.
“It is a continuation of a trend of a declining growth, and why was this growth declining, it was declining because of the rising NPAs in the banking sector. When this government came into office that figure was 4 lakh crore, it rose to 10.5 lakh crore by the middle of 2017 because under the previous RBI governor, Mr. Rajan, they had identified mechanisms to identify stressed and non-performing assets which is why the banks stopped giving credit to industries,” said Kumar on Monday.
He was responding to a question on why the growth had slowed down post demonetisation. He said the slowdown was not due to the decision to scrap old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes but because of Rajan's policies. "There was already a declining trend in the economy. Starting from the last quarter of 2015-16, the growth rate had come down for six successive quarters," he said.
The banking sector crisis in India can be identified by Punjab National Bank (PNB), India’s second-largest state-owned lender, posting its financial results for the first quarter of 2018-19. It reported a net loss of Rs 940 crore.
In June 2018, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cautioned in its Financial Stability Report that things would worsen before they become better. In March 2018, gross non-performing advances of all scheduled commercial banks stood at 11.6 percent of gross advances. The RBI outlined what it expected to happen to them a year hence in three scenarios. At best, it projected gross NPAs of 12.2 percent (baseline scenario); at worst, 13.3 percent (severe stress scenario).
“Especially in the case of small scale business, their credit actually shrank. There was a negative growth in the years. Even for the large industries, their growth shrank to 1.5 percent to 2 percent and in some quarter even negative. This has been the highest deleveraging of India’s commercial sector in the country’s economic history. Never had we seen such a continuous year after year of deleveraging of credit. This has been the primary reason for falling growth. The current government ramped up the public capital expenditure for the very raseon,” added Kumar.
For the first quarter of the current financial year, investments grew at 10 percent, lower than the 14.4 percent in the last quarter of the preceding financial year, benefitting from a 27.4 percent rise in the central government’s capital expenditure in the first quarter.
Courtesy: news18.com
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
