The Monetary Policy Committee meeting of RBI is scheduled to be held on 5th April 2024 when there is speculation about change in the REPO Rate. Here are the excerpts from the opinions from different sections of people.
Foreign brokerages and banks expect the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent in the upcoming, April 5, meeting. They also see the MPC retaining its monet-ary policy stance of ‘with-drawal of accommodation’. They see the MPC keeping the repo rate on hold even as the central bank continued to enjoy expanding space to cut interest rates, if needed.
Goldman Sachs Research and Morgan Stanley Research see the RBI going in for two rounds of 25 basis points cuts in the second half of this calendar year.
COMFORT RANGE
As inflation remained largely within the central bank’s com fort range, the RBI has kept policy repo rates steady since March 2023. Santanu Sengupta, Chief India Economist, Goldman Sachs India, said, “With 1HCY24 headline inflation still above the RBI’s target, we maintain our view that the RBI will keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent at the April 5 meeting, sounding optimistic on growth, acknowledge Jan-Feb average core inflation at 3.5 per cent, but continue to reiterate the commitment to the 4 per cent headline inflation target”.
Goldman Sachs Research has forecast one 25 basis points cut each in July-September and October-December quarter this year. Rahul Bajoria, MD & Head of EM Asia (ex-China) Economics, Barclays, said, “Not much has changed since the last MPC meeting in February, with the RBI overseeing an economy enjoying high growth and falling core inflation, amid stable macro stability parameters”. Against this backdrop, we expect the MPC to keep the repo rate on hold at 6.5 percent and maintain the monetary policy stance at a ‘withdrawal of accommodation’.
The RBI has dialled back its hawkishness on liquidity management since the February meeting, allowing weighted average call rates to drift lower, according to Bajoria. Upasana Chachra, Chief India Economist, Morgan Stanley, said in a recent researchnote that it sees the RBI going in for two rate-cuts of 25 basis points each, but pushed back the first rate cut from its earlier expectation of June to August/September. “We further expect the RBI to retain its monetary policy stance (as signalled by the comment that the
MPC will ‘remain focused on withdrawal of accommodation to ensure that inflation remains within the target going forward, while supporting growth’, Chachra said.
Noting that the current cycle was similar to 2003-07, given that growth was driven by capex and productivity, Morgan Stanley expects real rates to track about 150 points this cycle. In 2003-07, the aver-age real policy rate averaged 190 basis points. Barclays expects the RBI to increase its GDP growth fore-cast for FY25 to above 7 per cent, down a tad from around 8per cent in FY2.
No Comments