Jaitley takes stock of economy along with RBI guv and financial sector regulator

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, along with all the financial sector regulators on Tuesday, discussed the issues and challenges facing the Indian economy and agreed on the need to keep constant vigil and be in a state of preparedness of managing any external and internal vulnerabilities.

The meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) took note of the financial sector assessment programme for the country, jointly conducted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, hoped the assessment report should be finalised by the end of this calendar year.

The FSDC meeting, which came nearly two months after the GST rollout, also took stock of GST and demonetisation. Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian made a presentation on the state of the economy.

The Council noted that India has macroeconomic stability today on the back of improvements in its macroeconomic fundamentals, structural reforms with the launch of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), action being taken to address the Twin Balance Sheet (TBS) challenge, extraordinary financial market confidence, reflected in high and rising bond, and especially stock valuations and long-term positive consequences of demonetisation.

FSDC took note of the developments and progress made in setting up of the Computer Emergency Response Team in the Financial Sector (CERT-Fin) and the Financial Data Management Centre and discussed measures for time-bound implementation of the institution-building initiative.

A brief report on the activities undertaken by the FSDC sub-committee chaired by RBI Governor Urjit Patel was placed before the FSDC. The Council discussed about the Central KYC Registry (CKYCR) system, took note of the initiatives taken in this regard by the members and discussed the issues and suggestions in respect of operationalisation of CKYCR.

The meeting was attended by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, Banking Secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal, Corporate Affairs Secretary Tapan Ray and all financial sector regulators including Sebi, PFRDA, and IRDAI, among others.