The Reserve Bank’s remaining deputy governor, Kuben Naidoo, has defended its independence and insisted that policymakers take growth and employment levels into account when setting interest rates. Business Day reports he was speaking a week before a monetary policy committee meeting that might result in the first interest-rate cut since March 2018. Naidoo said that the Bank took a broader view than just on inflation, and this was for ‘sound and theoretical’ reasons. Monetary policy ‘must look at growth and employment, it must look at whether the economy is too hot or too cold, which is difficult when you don’t know the speed of the economy or what the trend growth is’, he said. ‘We also have to look at whether fiscal policy is acting normally. Higher levels of debt and a higher deficit have introduced risks that the central bank has to take into account. We can’t ignore that,’ he said. Naidoo used the occasion to defend the independence of the central bank, which he said acted as an important check on fiscal policy. ‘The central bank places a check on (fiscal policy). It places a constraint and limitation. In countries without independent central banks it is often tempting for that limitation or constraint to break down,’ he said.