Chidambaram meets RBI Governor ahead of budget

Ahead of the budget, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today held consultations with Reserve Bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao here.
"The Minister held a meeting with RBI Governor," a source told PTI, without disclosing the details of the deliberations.
Chidambaram is scheduled to unveil the Budget for 2013-14 in the Lok Sabha on February 28, preceded by Economic Survey tomorrow.
The meeting assumes significance as Chidambaram had earlier assured to bring down the fiscal deficit to 4.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2013-14, from 5.3 per cent estimated in the current fiscal.
Fiscal deficit is a measure of government borrowings, which is conducted by the Reserve Bank on behalf of the Centre.

Besides other things, Chidambaram is also expected to announce steps to contain current account deficit (CAD), which has been widening mainly on account of a surge in import of gold.
An RBI Committee had recently suggested fiscal and non fiscal steps to check import of the yellow metal. Finance Ministry, which had earlier raised the import duty on gold from 4 per cent to 6 per cent, could propose more steps in the budget to curb its imports.