Mumbai: In scathing comments on his bosses in North Block, former RBI governor Duvvuri Subbarao has alleged that ex-finance ministers P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee interfered in the functioning of the central bank, especially on setting interest rates, and the differences even led to two of his deputies not getting extensions.
“Both Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee were piqued by the Reserve Bank’s tight interest rate policy on the ground that high interest rates were inhibiting investment and hurting growth,” writes Subbarao, who manned the Mint Road during the global financial crisis and had a five-year tenure from September 5, 2008 to September 4, 2013.
The comments in the ‘Who Moved My Interest Rates’-Leading the Reserve Bank of India through Five Turbulent Years, a tell-tale memoir running into 352 pages and hitting the stands today, come within a month of present RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan refusing to accept a second term, apparently upset by the personal criticism levelled against him. The book narrates how Chidambaram and Mukherjee, as finance ministers during his term at the central bank, often made public their differences with the RBI on decisions on policy rates.(Sourced from agencies, Feature image courtesy:economictimes.indiatimes.com)
