Balance sheet clean-up RBI’s top priority: Deputy Governor Viral Acharya

NEW DELHI: Cleaning of banks’ balance sheet is the “No. 1 priority” for RBI, said deputy governor Viral Acharya on the sidelines of the Delhi Economics Conclave.

The central bank will review monetary policy on August 2. With inflation falling to record low, there are expectations that RBI will cut rates.

He said demonetisation has changed the perspective of some people towards black money, and preference for financial products is on the rise.

“One observation I had about the recent Indian experiment is that something interesting is going on in terms of financialisation of savings... this (savings) seems to have had a pretty non-linear shift since November and December.”

The flows that are going domestically into mutual funds, structured investment programmes as a form of savings, insurance premia collections — these are on the rise, he said.