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Patel's Exit Roils Indian Markets Already Jittery From Vote

RBI governor unexpectedly resigned amid public clashes with the government, roiling markets.

Patel's Exit Roils Indian Markets Already Jittery From Vote
Urjit Patel, governor of the Reserve Bank of India speaks during a news conference in Mumbai, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Urjit Patel’s shock exit as governor of the Reserve Bank of India roiled financial markets already nervous about early election results showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party losing support in key states.

The rupee dropped as much as 1.6 percent against the dollar in early trading on Tuesday, reacting to Patel’s decision to quit nine months before the end of his three-year term for “personal reasons.”

The currency later pared losses and bonds and stocks erased declines as investors braced for a tight finish in the key Madhya Pradesh state. The rupee was down 0.7 percent as of 2.30 p.m. in Mumbai, while yields on 10-year sovereign bonds fell 8 basis points. The S&P BSE Sensex gauge of stocks gained 0.5 percent.

Patel’s RBI had been at loggerheads with the government for weeks, fending off pressure to ease lending restrictions and transfer more of its excess capital to the state. A board meeting had been scheduled for Friday, at which government representatives were expected to seek changes to the central bank’s governance structure. It’s unclear if the board meeting will still proceed this week.

Patel's Exit Roils Indian Markets Already Jittery From Vote

Patel’s departure adds another layer of risk to an economy facing multiple threats, both foreign and domestic. The rupee is among the worst performers in Asia this year, the economy is weakening and the banking sector is in crisis.

“Investors’ concerns over the independence of the RBI are now higher than ever, but it is unlikely that the government will name another figure with a reputation for independence to lead the bank,” said Sasha Riser-Kositsky, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group. “The government faces a tough general election fight next year amid lackluster job creation and slower economic growth than it had promised.”

Read More on Patel’s Resignation
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  • Patel’s Senior-Most Deputy to Be India RBI Interim Head: Update
  • An Alarming Challenge to the Reserve Bank of India: Editorial 
  • India’s Bank Governor Goes Far Too Quietly: Andy Mukherjee
  • INDIA INSIGHT: Patel Exit May Shift Hawkish RBI to Balanced Path
  • India Wants RBI to Use Capital to Boost Weak Banks. Here’s How

The tension between the RBI and the government was laid bare in an October speech by Deputy Governor Viral Acharya, who defended the central bank’s independence and warned of a market backlash should it be undermined.

Patel, who succeeded Raghuram Rajan in September 2016, has tried to burnish the RBI’s credentials as an inflation-fighting central bank. After hiking interest rates twice this year, the RBI left rates unchanged last week, while giving itself room to move again by sticking to its “calibrated tightening” stance.

The exit of Patel may lead to a less hawkish bias at the RBI and could mean a rate cut returning to the agenda as soon as February, said Abhishek Gupta at Bloomberg Economics in Mumbai.

Investors will hope for a credible successor who’ll bring continuity, said economists at Citigroup Inc. They noted that nine of the bank’s governors since 1970 have had previous experience in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, and pointed out that it took more than two months to replace Rajan.

Patel's Exit Roils Indian Markets Already Jittery From Vote

Investor confidence in Indian assets had only recently bounced back, helped by a slide in oil prices and a dovish tone from the Federal Reserve. November saw the best rupee gains in nearly seven years, while local stocks saw their best month since July.

Taimur Baig, chief economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in Singapore, said there’s no reason to be overly negative about Patel’s successor, since the government had previously made credible appointments at the bank.

“One need not be very pessimistic about the successor, because this government has shown that it can pick people who can be a good steward of the economy,” he said in an interview with BloombergQuint.

Oxford-trained Patel, who shunned the public spotlight as governor, was initially seen as a Modi ally after he appeared to back the prime minister’s controversial ban on high-value currency notes in November 2016, which hurt the economy and led to thousands of job losses. Since then, he has battled to get India’s struggling banking system in order and punish errant borrowers who have stopped servicing their debt even though they have the ability to pay.

Patel tightened rules on weak state-run banks earlier this year, restricting their ability to lend. The government wants the RBI to relax the rules so banks can lend more easily and keep the economic engines firing ahead of a general election next year.

The Indian central bank is not alone in facing political heat, with challenges to the independence of monetary policy makers a theme of 2018. The Federal Reserve has weathered criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, while counterparts in Turkey and the U.K. have also been pressured by policy makers.

“Short-term political gain but with potentially incalculable long-term damage to the commitment to credible economic policy” Vivek Dehejia, an associate professor of economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, said on Twitter Monday. It “is a very tragic day for India and for sound economics.”

--With assistance from Archana Chaudhary, Saloni Shukla, Vrishti Beniwal, Ameya Karve and Michelle Jamrisko.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anirban Nag in Mumbai at anag8@bloomberg.net;Subhadip Sircar in Mumbai at ssircar3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.