RBI MPC: After a three-day bi-monthly meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India, the policy interest rates have been announced on Friday. The committee has not made any change in interest rates for the eighth time in a row.
New Delhi: The policy interest rates have been announced on Friday after a three-day bi-monthly meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India .
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das told in a press conference on Friday that the committee has not changed interest rates for the eighth time in a row. At present, the repo rate is 4 percent and the reverse repo rate is 3.35 percent.
This is the eighth consecutive time that the central bank has kept the repo rate unchanged. Along with this, the central bank has also decided to keep its monetary stance soft amid signs of recovery in the economy after the second wave of Kovid-19. Repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends short term to banks and reverse repo rate is the rate at which it borrows from banks.
Governor Das said that keeping in view the market sentiment and financial outlook, the committee has decided to maintain ‘accommodative stance’ for the eighth time in a row. The governor said that the economic output still remains below the pre-Covid level. But the inflationary trend is more favorable than expected and economic activity is picking up gradually. High frequency indicators show that economic activity has picked up in the second quarter.
RBI has not made any change in the GDP growth estimate this time as well. The real GDP growth forecast for FY 2021-22 has been retained at 9.5%. CPI Inflation (Consumer Price Index) for the current financial year is estimated to be at 5.3%, earlier it was kept at 5.7 percent. At the same time, retail inflation i.e. retail inflation will be at 5.3 percent till the end of March, 2022. Das said food inflation is expected to remain low in the coming month due to record production of food grains.
