Worst health and economic crisis in 100 years: RBI Governor

New Delhi, July 11: This is the worst health and economic crisis in the last 100 years, RBI Governor, Shaktikanta Das said, while referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This has had a negative consequence for output, jobs and well being. "The pandemic has dented the existing world order, global value chains, labour and capital movements across the globe," the RBI governor said while addressing the 7th SBI Banking and Economics Conclave via video conferencing.

He also said that the pandemic perhaps represents so far the biggest test of robustness and resilience of our economic and financial system.

However, the RBI Governor did not miss a chance to talk about the Repo rate. "From February 2019 onwards, on cumulative basis, we had cut the Repo rate by 135 basis points till the onset of COVID-19. That was done mainly to tackle the slowdown in growth which was visible at that time and we had elaborately touched upon its in our MPC Resolutions," Das said.

The lagged impact of these measures was about, to propel a cyclical turnaround in economic activity when COVID-19 brought with it calamities, miseries, endangering of lives and livelihood of people.This comes a day after an RBI report stated that the government had Rs 5.73 billion outstanding loans with the central bank under ways and means advances in the week ended July 3. The central government had no outstanding loans in the prior week.

State governments had Rs 70.04 billion loans from the RBI in the week ended July 3, compared with Rs 34.16 billion in the previous week, the release showed.