Poverty Can Be Dealt With 8% Of Economic Growth: RBI

At an International Monetary Fund event in Washington on Friday, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das expressed, the expansion of the world's fastest-growing major economy needs to pick up to around 8 percent to deal with poverty and other challenges. He added, while the past few years’ average growths of around 7.5 percent were impressive, the expectation is India can be better adding that more structural reforms were needed in areas such as land and labor.

India is expected to post real economic growth of 7.2 percent in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, and is seeing below-target inflation even as rising oil prices add an upside risk, the governor remarked and added that the inflationary impact from spikes in crude — India's biggest import.

The RBI reduced interest rates by a quarter-percentage point last week, the second cut in, as many meetings chaired by Das who took charge in December after Urjit Patel's sudden resignation. Despite the easing, the central bank still retained its neutral policy stands.

India has one of the highest real rates of interest in Asia and that's often been cited as a reason why investors hold back. Companies have also shied away from borrowing ahead of a general election campaign that kicked off April 11th.