(ET)
Finance minister Arun Jaitley called for further consolidation of India’s banking industry, saying the country needs fewer, stronger mega lenders to exploit economies of scale. He also dismissed fiscal concerns over welfare programmes announced in the February 1 budget. All such schemes have a cost but there has been reasonably high growth in revenue in the last five years as well, he told reporters after the finance minister’s customary post-budget address to the board of the central of the central bank.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das said he will meet heads of public and private sector banks later this week to discuss the transmission of interest rate cuts, following their muted response to the latest reduction in the policy rate by the central bank. “Finance minister in his address broadly outlined the various reforms and policy measures taken by the government over the last four years and the effects thereof,” the RBI said in a statement.
