Andy Mukherjee: A weakening rupee could end RBI’s efforts to keep credit cheap for borrowers
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.How soon will the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raise rates and how high will it take them? Those have become urgent questions for bankers in Mumbai after elevated energy-import costs pushed the rupee to a record low last week. RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra has signalled a preference to stay on pause. The central bank would step in, he said in an 18 April speech at Princeton University, “through its influence on inflation expectations rather than through blunt demand compression,” a euphemism for monetary tightening.Still, Malhotra’s cheap-money era is likely drawing to a close, thanks to the pressure from the foreign-exchange market.
The war in Iran started two months ago, and it has hammered the Thai baht, Philippine peso and the Indonesian rupiah too. Their central banks are also hesitant to raise their benchmark rates, with the notable exception of the Philippines. But the Indian currency has been Asia’s worst performing over the past two years, and staying pat for too long may backfire.
A weaker rupee in 2025 may have been a deliberate strategy to insulate exporters from punitive US tariffs. RBI slashed its key borrowing cost by 125 basis points after Malhotra took on the governor’s job in December 2024. It also pumped nearly ₹20 trillion into banks, nearly double the amount of liquidity support during the pandemic.Yet the funds simply leaked out of India’s banking system as global money managers dumped local assets and took dollars home.
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