Mumbai: The Mid-term Review of Monetary and Credit Policy for the year 2002-03 begins with the mid-term review of the macro-economy. This gains prime importance at this juncture, wherein there is lot of uncertainty about the direction of the economy.

To have a better understanding as to where the economy stands today it is best to have a look at the positive and negative factors affecting growth and then drawing a conclusion.

Positives	Negatives
Industrial growth picks up	Infrastructure industries growth slumps in September 2002
Exports growth booms	US and global economic recovery still uncertain
Non-Food Credit picks up, total flow of resources from SCBs also rise	Non-Food Credit picks up could be due to retail borrowing. Excluding the impact of mergers, scheduled commercial banks credit down, Food credit declined
Foreign exchange reserves rise	Oil Prices surge
Orderly conditions in forex market
	Bank lending rates show resistance to further cuts
Government borrowing at a substantially lower cost	The Governments budgeted borrowing programme may get affected
Fiscal deficit lower
Drought effect minimised	The impact of the drought more severe than expected
Inflation has been moderate	Business/ Investor Confidence seems to be tapering

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