Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
Claim
A WhatsApp forward has claimed that the RBI has extended the closure of the Fiscal Year till 30th June 2020.
Here’s what the WhatsApp forward exactly reads, “BREAKING NEWS
The next financial year will be from 01.07.2020 to 31.03.2021. RBI extends the year closing till 30.06.2020. RBI: FISCAL 2019-20 WILL END ON JUNE 30, 2020 WHILE the FISCAL YEAR 2020-21 WILL BEGIN ON JULY 1, 2020 BUT ENDS ON MARCH 31, 2021
Reserve Bank of India re-draws its financial year
Reserve Bank of India re-draws its financial year
The link of a ‘The Hindu’ report dated February 2020 is also mentioned in the viral WhatsApp forward.
Verification
Before verifying the viral WhatsApp forward, we took a moment to look at The Hindu for the story mentioned in the claim in order to ensure that the link is not tampered with and the date of publishing.
As we observed the aforementioned link, we noticed that the link is not tampered with and the article was first published on 15th February 2020 and later updated on 16th February 2020. Notably, what was updated in the article is not mentioned anywhere in the article and this is one of the many reasons why the media is losing its credibility as online media or alternate media is seeing a positively sloped acceleration.
In order to know what was originally published in the article, when we checked for an archived version of the article, we found that the article is not archived.
Now, as it is evident from the article itself that the article was published way before the Covid-19 outbreak had a major impact on India. We tried to collect more information
on the financial year norms followed by the Government and the RBI. We observed that the Financial year practiced by the RBI is from July to June and the government follows the April to March calendar. From the same source, we also learned that the RBI was deciding to sync its accounting calendar with the Government’s fiscal year in August last year.
After nearly 8 decades, RBI to change its accounting year to April-March
Breaking away with nearly eight decades of practice, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday decided to follow April-March calendar, and not July-June calendar, as its accounting year, a top central bank official said. It was done to align its accounting year with that of the central government.
It is noteworthy that as per the report cited above, the said decision was brought into consideration in August last year. (Similar to The Hindu report mentioned in the viral claim, the aforementioned Business Standard article was also updated and hence the origin of the report can not be traced back to collect more information.) It is evident from the date when this article was published that the decision to change the accounting calendar of RBI is well before the Covid-19 outbreak first emerged in the Chinese city Wuhan.
As we searched further, we found a report published by media outlet Firstpost that throws more light on the issue. The Firstpost article dated 17th February, 2020 reports that the RBI had sent a proposal to the government suggesting the said change in its accounting calendar.
RBI likely to follow April-March financial year from 2020-21 to align with Centre; proposal sent to govt for approval – Firstpost
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may follow April-March fiscal year, instead of the current July-June financial year system after the central bank’s board recommended for aligning it with that of the Central government.
When we performed a custom Google search, we found that the government think-tank NITI Ayog in 2016, in a discussion note titled ‘NEED FOR CHANGING INDIA’S FINANCIAL YEAR’ suggested that the RBI’s accounting year should be changed.
We also searched for more information about changing the accounting year of RBI and we found that many media outlets have carried multiple reports on the issue, the same can be viewed here.
Hence it is proved from the findings cited above that the change in the RBI’s accounting year is not motivated by the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Sources
- Google Search
Result: False Context
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Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
