The Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will today hold the post-budget meeting with the Reserve Bank of India’s central board and will highlight the key points of the Budget, including the fiscal consolidation roadmap.
The Budg
et announced on July 5, emphasized on further opening up of aviation, insurance and media sectors to foreign investment while throwing a lifeline to the struggling shadow banks (NBFCs) to boost investment and lending in the economy.
It has also proposed measures to improve Non-banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) access to funding by providing a limited backstop for the purchase of their assets. The government will provide a partial guarantee to state banks for the acquisition of up to Rs 1 lakh crore of highly-rated assets from non-bank finance companies.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been made regulator of housing finance firms as well, replacing the National Housing Bank.
With regard to surplus transfer from the RBI, the Budget envisages Rs 90,000 crore as dividend from the central bank in the current fiscal.
This will be 32 percent higher from the previous fiscal, when the RBI had paid Rs 68,000 crore to the government, including Rs 28,000 crore as interim dividend.
This was the highest receipt from the central bank in a single financial year, exceeding the Rs 65,896 crore received in 2015-16 and Rs 40,659 crore in 2017-18.
The Reserve Bank follows July-June financial year and usually distributes the dividend in August after annual accounts are finalised.
(With Agency inputs)
