The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will be meeting for three days on April 3, 5 and 6 to take into account various domestic and global factors before coming out with the first bi-monthly monetary policy for FY24
The Reserve Bank will hold six MPC meetings in the financial year 2023-24. The Union Government has tasked the RBI to ensure that retail inflation remains at 4% with a margin of 2% on either side
In a bid to fight high inflation, the Reserve Bank of India has increased the repo rate by a total of 250 basis points since May 2022. However, retail inflation continues to remain above RBI's comfort zone of 6%
In January 2023, CPI inflation was at 6.52% and in February at 6.44%. Core CPI has also been sticky right from November 2022 onwards till February 2023 and is above 6%
Given that CPI inflation has been 6.5% and 6.4% in the last two months and that liquidity is now near neutral, economists expect RBI to raise the repo rate once again by 25 bps
The two key factors which the RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das headed MPC will deliberate intensely are elevated retail inflation and the recent action taken by central banks of developed nations especially the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and Bank of England
"I am leaning towards a further and final 0.25 percentage point hike in rates," Chief Economist at Axis Bank Saugata Bhattacharya said recently, adding that the hike will tame the stubbornly high core inflation
According to economists, RBI MPC may probably change policy stance to neutral to signal that this cycle is over. This stance is typically adopted when the policy priority is equal on both inflation and growth
ICRA has suggested that following the anticipated rate hike this week, there should be an extended pause in rate hike by RBI throughout the remainder of FY24 to examine the transmission of policy tightening
RBI MPC's GDP growth outlook will be eyed as well. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, in the previous Monetary Policy Committee meeting announcements said that GDP is expected to grow at 6.4% for 2023-24. Q1 growth was pegged at 7.8%