'RBI should deploy alternate policy tools for growth'

New Delhi: Amid the challenging economic environment, the Reserve Bank's role may not be restricted to setting rates but also towards deploying alternative policy tools, a report said Friday.

"Evolving financial market conditions may in fact warrant RBI to assess the viability of open market operations (0MOs) as a tool to harmonise policy stance and effectively transmit monetary policy to the asset markets," India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said.

In the past, RBI used OMOs as purely a liquidity management tool.

Ind-Ra said its analysis shows that EBITDA growth of companies was at a decade low of 3.5 percent in 2014-15 and 4.1 percent in the first half of this fiscal.

The scenario is unlikely to change materially in the next two financial years, it said.

Further, around 24 percent of the debt of the top 500 corporate borrowers in 2014-15 belonged to those companies which do not generate enough funds from operations to service the interest cost, it added.

Besides, about 52 percent of the debt was attributed to corporates with coverage ratio of below 1.5x.