MUMBAI: Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday dismissed US President Donald Trump’s comment that India is a “dead economy”, highlighting the country’s strong growth contribution to the world. “I am not the right person to react to the US President,” governor Sanjay Malhotra said, adding that India’s growth was “robust at 6.5% versus 4% for the world.” He noted: “We are contributing about 18% to the total global growth which is more than US where the contribution is expected to be much lesser, I think about 11% or something. So we are doing very well and we will continue to further improve.”Malhotra said some of the impact of US tariff measures had been built into the RBI’s revised growth forecast, cut to 6.5% from 6.7% in its previous policy. “However, there is still a lot of uncertainty and it’s very difficult to predict the impact going forward,” he said, adding that the central bank would “continue to monitor macroeconomic conditions policy-to-policy and take a call accordingly”.He pointed out that India is “less dependent on the outside insofar as inflation is concerned” and did not expect a major impact “unless there are retaliatory measures, which I do not foresee”.Responding to a question on impact of moving away from Russian oil purchases, Malhotra said: “We source oil from many countries. If the mix changes, the impact on prices will depend on global crude prices and how much of that change is absorbed by the govt through excise duties and other tariffs. We do not see any major impact on inflation at this stage, as the govt is likely to take appropriate fiscal measures in case of any arising shock.“Beyond interest rate changes, Malhotra said RBI had acted “on prudential regulation and Fema to ease business and trade” and would “continue to act as needed”.
