Future monetary policy actions will be decided by trajectory of growth, inflation: RBI Governor

09 Jun 2025 Evaluate

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra has said the future monetary policy actions will be decided by the trajectory of growth and inflation. He noted that if the RBI's expectation of 6.5 per cent real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and inflation cooling to 3.7 per cent in FY26 plays out, there is ‘little space’ for interest rate cut. He also spelled out that the aspirational growth rate for India is 7-8 per cent per annum. He said the monetary policy will surely help accelerate the credit growth and help in the broader economic growth.

Malhotra said there is a need for the transmission to get faster in the economy, underlining that the process has been better this time than in the past instances. He said as against two rate cuts of 0.25 per cent each, the bank deposit rates have come down by 0.27 per cent, outstanding credit by 0.17 per cent. He however conceded that the growth rate of fresh loans is a little slow at 0.06 per cent. He said one of the motives of frontloading the rate cuts and coupling it with a CRR reduction is to hasten the transmission.

He said there was no voting on the stance, but the matter was discussed over the three days of deliberations and all the six members of the rate setting panel were for it. He said the reason for changing the stance to 'neutral' now is because it was felt that there is no further room to cut rates, and the same had to be conveyed to all stakeholders and provide a certainty. He added ‘Certainty will strengthen the economy’.

On the CRR cut, he said past experience suggests that ‘we do not need the liquidity buffer at 4 per cent and 3 per cent in the current circumstances is comfortable’. He said the call rate is going to stay at 5.25 per cent and will go down if the RBI undertakes Variable Rate Reverse Repo rate (VRRR) auctions. Meanwhile, the six-member monetary policy committee voted 5:1 in favour of a surprising 50 basis points cut in repo rate. It also announced a 1 percentage point decrease in cash reserve ratio. He also announced a shift in the stance of the monetary policy from 'accommodative' to 'neutral'.

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