Tuesday, 6 November 2018

Why Currency and Gold Revaluation Account and Investment Revaluation Account Credit balances shown as part of the capital and reserves on the RBI’s Balance Sheet cannot be transferred to Government of India 

These reserves are nothing but Revaluation reserves which represent periodic marked to market unrealised gains/losses  in the value of Assets on the RBI’s Balance Sheet and currently add up to about ₹7 trillion on RBI’s total assets of about ₹ 36 trillion , constituting about 20% of total assets . The other component of RBI’s capital and reserves of ₹2.5 trillion , constituting about 7% of total assets , comprise equity capital and contingency fund arising from interest income . Thus the total capital and reserves add up to about ₹9.5 trillion constituting 27% of total assets on RBI’s Balance Sheet. 

As regards the first component , namely, Revaluation reserves of ₹ 7 trillion, the only way it can be transferred to Government is by actually selling the ₹33.5 trillion ( ₹36-₹2.5 ) worth of RBI’s assets, and that too,  if and only if , the value of assets being sold does not go down , which it definitely will, given the sheer size  of the  assets ( 93% of its total assets ) on sale ! Even if we assume for the sake of argument that it doesn’t ,and will not ,go down, this will still result in the massive collapse/ shrinking/ contraction of RBI’s Balance Sheet ,and , therefore,  equally also of the high powered Reserve /Base Money and the matching collapse/ shrinking/ contraction in the broader Money Supply M3 , delivering the catastrophic and cataclysmic shock , bordering on a veritable financial and economic nuclear winter , to the real economy within no time with the matching collapse in output and employment due to involuntarily resulting exceptionally high interest rates ! 

The other component worth ₹2.5 trillion can of course be transferred but at the cost of making of making RBI’s core Tier 1 capital to Assets Ratio zero !