New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has kept interest rates unchanged, while maintaining a neutral monetary policy stance in the first monetary policy review of the current fiscal year on Thursday, amid a gradual recovery in growth and easing inflation.
RBI’s monetary policy committee (MPC) has decided to keep repo rate—the rate at which the central bank infuses liquidity in the banking system—at 6% with a vote of 5-1. Michael Debabrata Patra voted for an increase in the policy rate of 25 basis points.
In line with the repo rate, the central bank also held reverse repo rate unchanged at 5.75%.
The central bank projected consumer price index (CPI)-based inflation to be in the range of 5.1-5.6% in the first half of the fiscal year 2018-19, and 4.5-4.6% in the second half of the year, according to the press release. The CPI in February slowed to 4.4%, below RBI’s March projection of 5.1%.