India reschedules policy decision, new date to come soon

September 28, 2020

India’s central bank has rescheduled its monetary policy meeting that was planned to conclude on Oct. 1 with a policy decision, adding a new date will be announced shortly.

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy committee was scheduled to meet on Sept. 29, 30 and then conclude on Thursday, Oct. 1, according to a statement released by the central bank on its website.

RBI has cut its benchmark repo rate twice this year, in May and March, by 115 basis points to 4.0 percent, and seven times since February 2019 by a total of 250 points when it began easing its policy stance to boost the economy in response to slowing global growth.

At its last meeting in August, RBI kept its repo rate steady at 4.0 percent but said it would continue with an accommodative policy stance as long as necessary to revive economic growth after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while ensuring inflation remains within the bank’s target of 4.0 percent, plus/minus 2 percentage points.

Analysts had widely expected the RBI to maintain its rate this week in light of inflation that remained above the bank’s target range for the fifth month in a row at 6.69 percent in August.

In August RBI said it expected inflation to remain elevated in the second quarter of the 2020/21 fiscal year but then moderate in the second half of the current fiscal year, which began April 1.

India’s gross domestic product shrank by a larger-than-expected 23.9 percent year-on-year in the second calendar quarter of this year – the largest contraction on record – after growing 3.1 percent in the first quarter.

www.CentralBankNews.info

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