RBI Keeping an Eye on Borrowings of Large Corporates: Rajan

Hailing GST as "a good move", he said, "It will remove barriers among states and make a common market. It will bring more people under the tax net."

"The Chinese slowdown is a concern for the whole world. There is a lower demand for some of our exports to China. But indirectly too, many of the countries are not exporting to China as much as they did and they are buying less from us," Rajan said in a

KOLKATA: The Reserve Bank of India is maintaining a database which is being shared among banks to avoid over-borrowing by large corporate houses, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said here today.

"Moderation is required and some debt is good and not too much. Avoid over-borrowing to avoid problems," Rajan said at the Presidency University here.

Rajan said RBI has a database of large borrowers whose status of borrowings is shared among banks.

Acknowledging that Indian banks have the right kind of leveraging, he added that "those who said the banks have no capital requirements are not sensible".

Citing the example of Indian economy, he said foreign share in government debt is 3-3.2 per cent, which is "very reasonable".

"It is easy to fall to the temptation of easy money from outside and then, get into problems later. There is a need for the golden mean," he stressed.

Talking about the need for debt in society, Rajan said it's also responsible for creating "an antipathy" among entities. 

Rajan termed cutting interest rates to rock-bottom levels as "not a good idea". "Better is to have growth in real activity rather than a financial market boom due to distortion in prices," the governor said.

Hailing GST as "a good move", he added: "It will remove barriers among states and make a common market. It will bring more people under the tax net."