In the context of Indian economy, which of the following is/are the purpose/purposes of 'Statutory Reserve Requirements'? 1. To enable the Central Bank to control the amount of advances the banks can create 2. To make the people's deposits with banks safe and liquid 3. To prevent the commercial banks from making excessive profits 4. To force the banks to have sufficient vault cash to meet their day-to-day requirements Select the correct answer using the code given below.

In the context of Indian economy, which of the following is/are the purpose/purposes of 'Statutory Reserve Requirements'? 1. To enable the Central Bank to control the amount of advances the banks can create 2. To make the people's deposits with banks safe and liquid 3. To prevent the commercial banks from making excessive profits 4. To force the banks to have sufficient vault cash to meet their day-to-day requirements Select the correct answer using the code given below. Correct Answer 1 only

The correct answer is 1 only.

  • Statutory Reserve Requirement is an instrument to manage liquidity.
  • RBI requires commercial banks to keep reserves in order to ensure that banks have sufficient assets to draw on when account holders want to be paid. Hence statement 2 is not correct. (According to the UPSC answer key)
  • The first instrument is the Cash Reserve Ratio in which is the fraction of their deposits that banks must keep with RBI. 
  • Another tool is the Statutory Liquidity Ratio which requires the banks to maintain a given fraction of their total demand and time deposits in the form of specified liquid assets. 
  • When the central bank wants to increase the money supply in the economy, it lowers the reserve ratio. Hence it enables the Central Bank to control the number of advances the banks can create. Hence statement 1 is correct.
  • Reserve requirements are designed as “precautionary measures” to control the economy and not to stop banks from “excessive” profit and not to force the banks to have sufficient cash to meet their day-to-day requirements. Hence statement 3 and 4 is incorrect.

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