Ahead of elections, six-member MPC to meet on April 4 to take decision on interest rate

Mumbai, Apr 1 (KNN) Ahead of elections, six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) headed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das will meet for three days here and announce the decision on interest rate on April 4.

It would be the first bi-monthly monetary policy of 2019-20.

Das has already held meetings with stakeholders including industry bodies, depositors association, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) representatives and bankers.

The industry is pitching for another rate cut as the inflation is well below the RBI's mandate of 4%.

According to the notification by RBI, “Reserve Bank shall organize at least four meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee in a year and the meeting schedule of the Monetary Policy Committee for a year shall be published at least one week before the first meeting in that year.”

The RBI has already diluted its stance on two main policy issues, the need to link retail loans to an external benchmark from April 1 and the need to adopt Ind AS accounting standards.

To address liquidity concerns, the RBI undertook a rupee-dollar swap with banks which resulted in nearly Rs 35,000 crore of liquidity being injected into the banking system before the fiscal year-end.

If the RBI cuts the repo rate, the benchmark will be back at 6% as was the case in April 2018. Former RBI governor Urjit Patel had announced two rate hikes in June 2018 and August 2018 when rising oil prices threatened to fuel inflation in India. (KNN/JM)