Sitharaman reviews state of economy with RBI

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday reviewed the state of the economy, including stress in the financial sector, at the meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC).

The FSDC is the apex body of sectoral regulators, headed by the finance minister. The 21st meeting of FSDC comes against the backdrop of the economy hitting a six-year low growth rate of 5 per cent in the first quarter of 2019-20.

Even some of the macroeconomic data for the second quarter does not portray an encouraging picture of the economy. Industrial output growth in August contracted by 1.1 per cent, after a gap of 26 months, reinforcing fears of a slowing economy and deteriorating consumer sentiment.

The output of eight core infrastructure industries contracted by 5.2 per cent in September, indicating the severity of the economic slowdown.

"Broadly overall macro-economic issues and the state of the economy were discussed in detail. There were some inter-regulatory issues which were also discussed.

We also discussed about cybersecurity issues that were one important component of the discussion," RBI Governor said.