Urjit Patel skips thanking government in his statement

The outgoing RBI governor Urjit Patel, in his statement letter, skipped thanking the government.

“The support and hard work of RBI staff, officers and management has been the proximate driver of the Bank’s considerable accomplishments in recent years. I take this opportunity to express gratitude to my colleagues and Directors of the RBI Central Board,” Patel said in his resignation statement.

This hold significance, as the central bank and the government have been on the warring ends recently over the various issues.

After a public spat between the apex bank and the government over issues of credit to MSMEs and allocation of the RBI reserve, the board of the central bank on November 19 decided to refer both the issues to the expert committee.

The government has been unhappy with the Reserve Bank for not doing enough to enhance credit supply to MSMEs, which it considers a crucial vote bank for the general elections of 2019. The government has been also eyeing Rs 3.6 lakh crore from the RBI reserves as a way to dole out populistic schemes in a buildup to the elections.

The spat between the RBI and the government became public after one of its deputy governors Viral Acharya criticised the government for interference with the autonomy of the central bank. Acharya, in his speech, had said that he was inspired by Patel to pick autonomy of the central bank as theme for his public lecture.

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