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Policymakers in India and across the world have employed a combination of fiscal and monetary measures in an effort to prop up economic growth and avert a deep and extended slowdown since the start of the global economic crisis in 2008. They now face the challenge of managing the sequencing and timing of withdrawal of these measures while ensuring that economic growth is maintained. Since October 2008, the Government of India (GoI) has announced a series of fiscal stimulus packages and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lowered policy rates, including the cash reserve ratio (by 400 basis points), the repo rate (by 425 basis points), and the reverse repo rate (by 275 basis points), besides employing a host of other measures to prevent a sharp slowdown in economic growth and to ensure adequate liquidity. While India’s GDP growth slowed from 9% in 2007-08 to 6.7% in 2008-09, the Indian economy was still able to report among the highest growth rates in the world in 2008-09 despite a sharp contraction in exports during the second half (H2) of the year. India’s growth performance since H2 2008-09 underscores the resilience of domestic consumption, which has been facilitated by GoI’s fiscal stimulus measures (including excise cuts) as well as the revision of pay and release of substantial arrears of public sector employees following the acceptance of the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission by the Central Government in August 2008 and later by various State Governments. The fiscal measures employed by GoI have however pushed up the fiscal deficit to levels that are clearly unsustainable in the long run. The liquidity situation in India eased considerably after December 2008, with the RBI’s Liquidity Adjustment Facility remaining largely in absorption mode since the beginning of calendar year 2009. However, the transmission of monetary policy has been slow and incomplete, with the decline in interest rates and bond yields lagging the cuts in policy rates. Moreover, non-food bank credit growth has remained low so far in 2009-10. Nevertheless, the continuing easy monetary conditions are at odds with the high inflation looming on the horizon. Thus the central challenge before policymakers is to reverse both the fiscal and monetary measures at an appropriate time while also ensuring that the green shoots of economic recovery are not crushed.
Recent data suggest that the economic slowdown experienced by the Indian economy since the second half of 2008-09 may have been arrested and that a revival is perhaps imminent. Notably, GDP growth for the first quarter (Q1) of 2009-10 has marginally exceeded that for Q3 and Q4 of 2008-09, while growth of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) has surged in recent months after having remained low since October 2008. Further, monthly exports have displayed improvement since April 2009.
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