Q&A: Montek Singh Ahluwalia

A day after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised the repo rate by 50 basis points, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, to Sanjeeb Mukherjee on the move. Edited excerpts:

You have been quoted as saying RBI’s measures were ‘slightly aggressive’.
An aggressive measure, which I feel was needed. I don’t see anything wrong in that.

The markets reacted very negatively?
We should not be guided by how stock markets behave. Markets react negatively to a variety of information. There are some short-term implications and some medium-term ones, which almost all newspapers reported today.

Do you see an impact on year-end growth?
I believe growth this year would be around 8-8.5 per cent. It (growth) should remain below 8.5 per cent but would not fall below 8 per cent. It could be somewhere around 8.2 per cent.