RBI should cut rates to make India Inc competitive: Mahindra

Stating that high interest rates can make the Indian industry uncompetitive, Mahindra & Mahindra Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Anand Mahindra said RBI should cut rates further.

Stating that high interest rates can make the Indian industry uncompetitive, Mahindra & Mahindra Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Anand Mahindra on Wednesday said RBI should cut rates further.

HT Image

"I think that RBI needs to lower rates in the light of what is happening in the rest of the world; otherwise, Indian industry will become uncompetitive. I think what RBI should do is to benchmark with the moves of significant economies. It should see what is the interest rates needed to make Indian industry competitive and to stoke consumer demand," Mahindra told PTI on the first day of World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lowered the economic growth forecast to 7 per cent, but kept key policy rates and ratio unchanged in its quarterly review of the annual monetary policy.

Mahindra, who is co-chairing the annual meeting of WEF in Davos, Switzerland, where the world's top business and political leaders are participants in the five-day meet, said the Indian auto industry needs aggressive reduction of interest rates to be competitive.

"I am a little disappointed...I do think that we, as industry, need to impress upon them (RBI) in a more significant manner the need for reduction of consumer loan rates," he said.