RBI Monetary Policy: Experts highlight key takeaways

The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), on February 8, decided to leave the repo rate unchanged at 6.5% for the sixth straight time. The decision was in line with Street expectations.

Ashwini Kumar Tewari, MD of State Bank of India (SBI) said, the policy is on expected lines. "The industry, banks, and everyone else want policy stability and predictability above all else and this policy is supportive of it," he added.

Upasna Bhardwaj, Chief Economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank, called it a "fairly balanced policy."

Sanjay Parekh, Founder & CIO of Sohum Asset Managers concurred with Bhardwaj, while noting concerns voiced by the RBI governor Shaktikanta Das regarding inflation uncertainty and volatility. The governor's tone suggested that a change in stance and rate cuts might be on the horizon if inflation stabilises around 4%.

According to Kaushik Das, Chief Economist at Deutsche Bank, any change in stance could signal RBI's readiness to cut rates, which it might not want to indicate at this point.

However, Shobhit Mehrotra, Head Fixed Income at HDFC Asset Management was disappointed by the policy outcome as he believes the opportunity to provide better liquidity support to the system was missed.

Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group CEA, SBI said, “One interesting take from the policy is, basically, I call it a competitive forecasting. Because last two years, the RBI’s GDP forecast was lower than the government. This year, the RBI has straightaway put the forecast for FY25 at 7%. With inflation at 4.5%, this gives the government much leeway to have a higher nominal GDP target. So this means that the next year fiscal deficit target could actually be lower than 5.1%.”

Pranjul Bhandari, Chief India Economist, HSBC said, “One takeaway is that the RBI is no mode urgently to ease monetary policy and different parts of the policy gave the same message.”