RBI Bulletin – October 2023

Summary

The Reserve Bank of India has released its October 2023 Bulletin, which includes two speeches, six articles, and current statistics. The articles cover various topics, including the state of the economy, measuring uncertainty, and the impact of G-Sec yield movements on bank profitability.

The articles highlight that global growth has slowed due to weak manufacturing activity and tight financial conditions in advanced economies, while India has shown a broad-based gain in momentum, with inflation moderating from its July peak. The Bulletin also discusses the impact of COVID-19 on different sectors, including housing finance companies and R&D expenditure.

Some key findings include that:

Common temporal uncertainty, rather than idiosyncratic uncertainty, caused overall uncertainty to rise during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Larger banks have managed the impact of rising G-Sec yields better than smaller banks.
Excess rainfall has a significant and negative impact on kharif foodgrain production.
Housing finance companies, with around 36% market share, exhibited robust credit growth and low GNPA ratio during the pandemic.
* Firm-level R&D activities are driven by firm characteristics such as size, age, digitalization, and promotional expenses, and were resilient to the impact of COVID-19.

The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Reserve Bank of India.