Urjit Patel will ensure continuity at RBI: SS Mundra

NEW DELHI: RBI Deputy Governer SS Mundra said the appointment of Urjit Patel as new governor of the Reserve Bank of India will ensure continuity as he has been with the central bank for a while and that the pace of formation of new non-performing assets (NPAs) has already decelerated.

“Of course I mentioned that while Dr Patel is new as a governor, he is not new for RBI,” Mundra said on the sidelines of CII function in Delhi.

“Also, in his present role as the Deputy Governor of RBI, he is in charge of monetary policy which is at the centre stage of all the inflation … monetary policy related activity. Taking that perspective, this is work in progress and it would be reasonable to expect continuity,” he said.

On Saturday the government announced Patel will succeed Raghuram Rajan as the next governor.

“When I look at individual results, there are a number of banks for whom it appears that the worst is over but then there are other banks... still they are in middle of it and they will need to do some work before they get out of it,” he said.

“It would be naive to believe that there won't be any non-performing assets formation but the pace of new NPA formation has clearly decelerated, that is what the major trend is,” he said, adding that most of the banks were adequately capitalized as of now.

Mundra said the Resrve Bank is preparing a framework for peer to peer (P2P) lending to facilitate availability of finance to micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).