RBI to retain its monetary policy till April 20

February 11, 2010 04:17 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 07:17 am IST - New Delhi

Borrowers may breathe easy for sometime as the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday said it is not going to change its policy rates or other tools, which have a bearing on interest rates, till April 20.

“Please don’t expect any action between now and the next announcement unless there is a completely unanticipated, unwarranted event,” RBI deputy governor Subir Gokarn told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham seminar here.

The RBI is scheduled to come out with its annual monetary policy for the next fiscal on April 20.

“We had anticipated in our announcement in January that the government would live up to its earlier commitment to bring the (fiscal) deficit down to 5.5 per cent of the GDP and our policy decision on January 29 takes that into consideration,” he said.

The Finance Minister had set a target of reducing the fiscal deficit to 5.5 per cent of GDP next fiscal from the projection of 6.8 per cent for the current fiscal.

On food inflation, the deputy governor said, “In the event of a normal monsoon, I think the food inflation situation should moderate towards the end of the year.”

In the monetary policy review on January 29, RBI Governor D Subbarao had said, ”on the assumption of a normal monsoon and global oil prices remaining around the current level, it is expected that inflation will moderate from July 2010.”

Mr. Gokarn added: “We don’t have week by week expectations. We track the numbers. We have along term outlook. We expect food inflation to soften.”

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.