Letters: Not so fast

This refers to the report “Debt Management Bill likely soon” (March 7). Though it is rational of the government to take over and manage public debt on its own, the haste with which the finance ministry is trying to pass the Bill is unwarranted. The ministry is already burdened with several other preoccupations and compulsions arising from loss of credibility, compulsions of coalition politics and a host of other relationship issues with regulators and financial institutions including banks. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been managing smoothly the Centre and state governments' public debt for several decades. In the interest of financial stability the government should not disturb the present arrangement, at least until it is in a position to take up a comprehensive review of the monetary system envisaged in the preamble of the RBI Act.

The issues of human resources and manpower were not the only ground on which RBI opposed the shifting of debt management to the finance ministry. It was common knowledge that even if the work is transferred, the finance ministry will have to initially depend on the in-house expertise developed in RBI over decades of effort. Since the government has enough authority to “direct” RBI in an eventuality, there is no need to hurry through this piece of legislation at a time when more attention should be paid to clearing the mess that is already there on the drawing board of Parliament.

M G Warrier, Thiruvananthapuram

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