February 2022, Chennai: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai organized its 12th Great Lakes-Union Bank Finance Conference yesterday. The event was held virtually with Dr. Duvvuri Subbarao, 22nd Governor of Reserve Bank of India and Former Finance Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, delivering a talk on ‘Policymaking dilemmas during turbulent times.
At the event, Dr Suresh Ramanathan, Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management said, “Dr Subbarao was a master of crisis having shepherded the country and its economic policy through one of the worst crises the world had ever known. What happened in 2008-2009, finds some form of repetition in the events of the last two years. A different form of a crisis, but a crisis nonetheless. Various sectors of the economy have been affected, the policy as a whole has been impacted.”
Dr Subbarao shared his experiences with students and narrated how he began his career at RBI in the midst of an economic crisis. Some of the challenges he faced at that time include the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009), Eurozone sovereign crisis (2010-11), Stagflation scare (2012) and Taper tantrums (2013).
He said that the five major dilemmas he faced were the global financial crisis, managing monetary policy, managing communication, managing the exchange rate and managing regulation. One of the main challenges he said was, “The market was not offering me credibility. I was an inexperienced governor who led the Reserve Bank through this extraordinary crisis.”
Elaborating on the current scenario, he said, there was tension between growth and inflation. “The dilemma for the Reserve Bank today was how does it support growth at the same time maintain low and steady inflation. The mandate of the RBI is to maintain a balance and deliver on Price stability, that is, low and steady inflation and at the same time support growth. The instrument available is repo rate.” He also explained the tension between giving what both savers and borrowers need. “The concern today is the low-interest rates and enormous liquidity available in the system is it could potentially disrupt financial stability”, Dr Subbarao said.
He commented that the challenges of managing monetary policy were juggling between maintaining price stability, supporting growth/employment, preserving financial stability and all this in a globalizing world.
Dr Subbarao stressed the importance of communication from the Central bank. “Central bank communication is a very potent tool. But until recently, Central banks have been reticent about using communication as a policy tool. Markets pay very close attention to what central banks say. They analyse every word, turn of phrase and nuance.”
Later, he interacted with students of the Great Lakes Institute of Management answering several of their questions.
The lecture was followed by a panel discussion by Mr. Saurabh Mukherjea, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Marcellus Investments along with his team members Rakshit Ranjan and Salil Desai on their book ‘Diamonds in the Dust – Consistent Compounding for Extraordinary Wealth Creation.’
The event was conducted on zoom and was streamed live on the management institute’s official YouTube channel. It witnessed enthusiastic participation from students and faculty alike.
