RBI keeps status quo on rate, ups inflation target

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) kept the policy rate unchanged at 6.5%, but increased the cash banks need to keep with it by around ₹1 lakh crore as it moved to remove excess liquidity from the system, indicating that inflation was still a concern, especially in the short-term.

- Roshan Kishore

While those with home loans can take cheer from the fact that their mortgages will not become more expensive, and from the central bank's instruction to commercial banks to make the process of fixing the rate for floating rate home loans more transparent, they will likely have to wait till around early 2024 (if that) for a rate cut.

Growth, especially in India, is not a concern, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das indicated in his statement, and the central bank's monetary policy committee has kept its growth projection for 2023-24 unchanged at 6.5%, although it has increased its inflation projection from 5.1% to 5.4%. Indeed, with headline inflation numbers set to see a spike due to a sharp rise in vegetable prices, the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee has sent out a message that it will step in (with rate hikes) if food price tailwinds to overall inflation last beyond the next couple of months.

"We do look through idiosyncratic shocks, but if such idiosyncrasies show signs of persistence, we have to act", Das said in his statement after the conclusion of the three-day MPC meeting on August 10.

Analysts see MPC's communication as "modestly hawkish" and believe that RBI's future course on monetary policy is likely to take a data dependent course. To be sure, most of them agree that the upward revision of inflation projections has pretty much taken rate cuts in the current calendar year out of question.