Finance Minister Arun Jaitley criticises RBI for lending excess

NEW DELHI: India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley criticised the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for failing to prevent lending excess in a speech on Tuesday.

“The central bank looked the other way when banks gave loans indiscriminately during 2008 to 2014,” Jaitley said while speaking at an event in New Delhi.

Tensions between the finance ministry and the RBI have risen since the bank’s deputy governor said in a speech on Friday that undermining a central bank’s independence could be “potentially catastrophic”, in an indication that it is pushing back hard against government pressure to relax its policies and reduce its powers.