RBI governor calls for better access to currency swap lines

Urjit Patel says emerging markets largely have been excluded from the global networks

The governor of the Reserve Bank of India on Sunday called on major central banks to extend their network of currency swap lines deep into emerging markets, saying a type of “virtual apartheid” in the provision of foreign currencies hampers efforts to fight financial instability.

Urjit Patel’s unusually forthright language — central bankers rarely criticize each other in public — offers a glimpse of tensions among policy makers as an improvement in the global economy encourages some central banks to step back from the easy-money policies they have pursued for more than a decade.

So-called swap lines have emerged since