RBI approves Rs 87,416 cr dividend payout to Centre for 2022-23

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday announced that it will pay Rs 87,416 crore to the central government as dividend for the financial year 2022-23, nearly triple of what it paid in the previous year, which will help bridge the fiscal deficit.

The RBI’s dividend payout is nearly double of the government's expectation announced in the budget. In the Union Budget 2023-24, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman projected to receive Rs 48,000 crore in dividend from the RBI, public sector banks and financial institutions.

During the financial year ended March 2023, the government received Rs 40,953 crore from RBI and public sector financial institutions. This included Rs 30,307 crore as dividend from the RBI for the fiscal 2021-22.

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The higher than expected payouts from the central bank will help Prime Minister Narendra Modi government in narrowing the fiscal deficit, which is budgeted at 5.9 per cent of the GDP for the current financial year. The fiscal deficit stood at 6.4 per cent in 2022-23.

The RBI pays dividends to the central government from the surplus income it earns on investments and valuation changes on its foreign exchange holdings, including dollar, and the fees it gets from printing currency notes. The dividends for fiscal 2022-23 will be paid in the current fiscal.

The decision of dividend payout was taken in the meeting of the RBI’s Central Board of Directors chaired by Governor Shaktikanta Das.

The board also decided to raise the contingency risk buffer for 2022-23 to 6 per cent from 5.50 per cent in 2021-22. This is in line with the Bimal Jalan Committee's recommendation of having a contingency risk buffer in the range of 6.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent. Contingency buffer is a specific provision made for meeting unexpected contingencies from exchange rate operations and monetary policy decisions.

The board also reviewed the “global and domestic economic situation and associated challenges including the impact of current global geopolitical developments,” the RBI said in a statement.