No capital control measures on anvil, says Chidambarm

Reeling under the battering suffered by the rupee and markets, Finance Minister P Chidambaram and RBI Governor D Subbarao today sought to assuage investors that there are no capital control measures in the offing and there is no need for panic in markets.
While maintaining that they were not targeting a level for the rupee, both of them said it was undervalued. The RBI will revisit measures to check speculation in forex market once stability returns, they said.
"We believe that the rupee is undervalued and has overshot what is generally believed to be a reasonable and appropriate level," Chidambaram said at a press conference on a day the rupee hit a lifetime low of 65.56 to a dollar.

After holding a three-hour long discussion with Subbarao, governor-designate Raghuram Rajan and other key officials of his ministry, he said, "there is no cause for the panic that seems to have gripped the currency market and that is feeding into other markets.
"We are confident that stability will return in these markets and we can get on with the task of promoting investment and growth", he said.
Stressing that there was no reason for "excessive or unwarranted pessimism", the Minister said that the recent steps taken by the Reserve Bank to reduce volatility in forex market and quell speculation would be revisited.

"There was--and is--no intention to introduce any type of capital control, including controls on repatriations. It is not the policy of the government of the RBI to resort to capital control or reverse the direction of capital account of liberalisation. The measures that were taken last week will be revisited as stability returns", he said.
Subbarao in a separate media briefing said India has adequate forex reserve to meet the current situation and the central bank will take appropriate measures to curb rupee volatility.
Conceding that growth will remain flat in the first quarter of the current fiscal, Chidambaram said, it will pick up in the later part of 2013-14.