Mumbai: Giving in to overwhelming demands for an easing of the monetary policy, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday lowered its short-term lending rate by 25 basis points in a move that could potentially reduce the cost of borrowings on personal and corporate loans.
In his bi-monthly monetary policy review for the current fiscal year at the RBI headquarters here on Mint Street, Governor Raghuram Rajan said the repurchase rate has been lowered to 7.25 per cent on the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation.
Prior to the review, the repo rate -- the interest rate which the central bank levies while lending short-term funds to commercial banks -- stood at 7.5 per cent.
"Consequently, the reverse repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) stands adjusted to 6.25 per cent and marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the bank rate to 8.25 per cent," the governor said.
CRR unchanged
The cash reserve ratio (CRR), the quantum of funds commercial banks have to keep in the form of cash or government bonds, has been left unchanged at 4 per cent of deposits.
"Our policy is neither too conservative, nor too aggressive -- but just right for the given moment," Rajan said at a post-policy press conference, and made it clear that he would like to see the commercial banks passing on the rate cuts down the line.
Thus far in this calendar year, the Reserve Bank has cut its lending rate by 75 basis points. But for this to translate into lower interest rates for personal, housing, automobile and corporate loans, commercial banks also have to initiate such an action.
As soon as the statement was updated at 11 am, the sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) took a dip of over 200 points. At that point, the intra-day fall was as must as 450 points. Half hour thereafter, the index was ruling with a loss of 360 points or 1.3 per cent.
Giving the reasons for the policy stance, Rajan said plans for lower food output needed to be in place, global financial markets were volatile, factory output was recovering unevenly, services sector was emitting mixed signals, fuel inflation was up, exports were down and liquidity had improved.
In the calendar year, thus far, the central bank has twice cut the repo rate over two unscheduled monetary policy reviews -- in January and March, bringing it down to 7.5 percent. But during the scheduled reviews in February and April, no changes were effected.
In April, Rajan said banks have to pass on the previous rate cuts, and dismissed claims that cost of funds remained too high. At Tuesday's press conference, Rajan said banks had slowly started to lower interest rates, but the pace was not fast enough.
Ahead of the policy update, while the underlying expectation was for a 25 basis points cut in the lending rates, stakeholders hoped the RBI would spring a surprise by lowering its interest rate by 50 basis points.
