Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday approved a dividend payout of Rs. 57,128 crore to the central government. The development has come at a time when the government is struggling with poor revenue collections and a record fiscal deficit of Rs.6.62 lakh crore due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The dividend was cleared at the 584th meeting of the RBI Central Board met today under the Chairmanship of governor Shaktikanta Das through video conference.
“The Board reviewed the current economic situation, continued global and domestic challenges and the monetary, regulatory and other measures taken by RBI to mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic. The Board discussed the proposal of setting up an Innovation Hub. The Board discussed various areas of operations of the Bank during the last year and approved the Annual Report and accounts of the of the Reserve Bank for the year 2019-20. The Board also approved the transfer of Rs. 57128 crore as surplus to the Central Government for the accounting year 2019-20, while deciding to maintain the Contingency Risk Buffer at 5.5%” said RBI.
Deputy Governors B.P. Kanungo, Shri Mahesh Kumar Jain and Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra and other Directors of the Central Board –N.Chandrasekaran, Dr. Ashok Gulati, Manish Sabharwal, Dr. Prasanna Kumar Mohanty, Dilip S. Shanghvi, Satish K. Marathe, Shri S Gurumurthy, Ms. Revathy Iyer and Prof. Sachin Chaturvedi attended the meeting. Tarun Bajaj, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs and Debasish Panda, Secretary, Department of Financial Services also attended the meeting