The Reserve Bank will go for a "dovish pause" at Wednesday's policy review announcement amid developments such as a rise in inflation, government maintaining the inflation target band and a likely impact on growth due to local lockdowns on rising COVID-19 infections, analysts said on Monday. Economists at American brokerage Bofa Securities said price stability, growth and financial stability will become the prime focus areas for the central bank going forward. "The RBI MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) should deliver another dovish pause on Wednesday," it said. The policy announcement, the first for the fiscal, will come days after the government maintained the RBI's target to ensure inflation to be within 2-6 per cent band for five more years.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday slashed India's growth forecast for 2022-23 (FY23) by 80 basis points to 7.4 per cent, citing less favourable external conditions and rapid policy tightening by the central bank. In its update to the April World Economic Outlook, the IMF said that though a global recession in 2022 was ruled out with a growth estimate of 3.2 per cent, the balance of risks was squarely to the downside, driven by a wide range of factors that could adversely affect the global economic performance. "The risk of recession is particularly prominent in 2023, when in several economies growth is expected to bottom out, household savings accumulated during the pandemic will have declined, and even small shocks could cause economies to stall.
All public sector banks have moved to such a regime voluntarily, while private banks are yet to. The state-run banks have introduced repo-linked products for floating-rate home and auto loans, but the RBI said loans to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) should also be linked to an external benchmark.
Tata Steel was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rising around 4 per cent, followed by Infosys, Bajaj Finance, TCS, HCL Tech, ICICI Bank and Tech Mahindra. On the other hand, Bharti Airtel, M&M, L&T and Axis Bank were among the laggards.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to address the post-budget meeting of the RBI's central board on Monday and highlight key points of the Union Budget 2022-23, including the fiscal consolidation roadmap and high capex plan. It has been a custom that the finance minister addresses the RBI board, consisting of RBI Governor and existing four deputy governors, after the Budget. The meeting has been scheduled for February 14 where she would be addressing the board members and talk about announcements made in the Budget to perk up growth hit by three waves of COVID-19, sources said.
India's GDP may turn positive at 1.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2020-21, having witnessed contraction in the previous two quarters due to the coronavirus pandemic, as the number of cases is falling and public spending has started rising, according to a report. The government will release the GDP numbers for the October-December quarter of the current fiscal on Friday. Projecting that the gross domestic product (GDP) may have returned to the black in the last quarter of the calendar year 2020, DBS Bank in the report said the full-year growth in real terms may be at a negative 6.8 per cent.
As the Indian currency hovers around its lowest versus the US greenback, several smaller and mid-sized companies are expected to face rough weather as almost 44 per cent of the foreign loans taken by Indian companies remained unhedged. According to the data sourced from the Reserve Bank of India, Indian companies raised around $38.2 billion in the financial year ended in March. Of this, only 56 per cent of the loans are hedged while the rest of the foreign loans remain unhedged, thus risking the companies to forex volatility.
Gaurav Garg, head of research at CapitalVia Global Research Limited will answer your stock market queries.
The overall confirmed cases on the mainland have reached 81,518 as of Monday, which included 3,305 people who died of the of disease.
All members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) -- Shashanka Bhide, Ashima Goyal, Jayanth R Varma, Mridul K Saggar, Michael Debabrata Patra and Shaktikanta Das -- had unanimously voted to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent after the three-day meet of the panel earlier this month. Further, except Varma, other members voted to continue with the accommodative stance as long as necessary to revive and sustain growth on a durable basis and continue to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, while ensuring that inflation remains within the target going forward. Varma expressed reservations on this part of the MPC resolution, according to the minutes.
At interactions last week with senior officials from the Reserve Bank of India, select banks gave feedback on two key bond market concerns, namely, recent volatility in the rupee-dollar exchange rate and heavy losses incurred on floating rate government bonds due to a demand-supply mismatch, sources told Business Standard. The discussions were held ahead of the RBI's next monetary policy statement, scheduled on August 5. Indian banks are large holders of government securities because of a regulatory mandate to set aside a certain percentage of deposits in sovereign bonds.
Das said that global economic activity has remained fragile and the surge in COVID-19 cases has subdued early signs of revival.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the recent interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank was not surprising for her but the timing was, asserting that the rising cost of funds will not impact the government's planned infrastructure investments. For the first time since August 2018, RBI had on May 4 delivered a blunt 40 basis points increase in key repo rate to 4.40 per cent, and also hiked the cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points to 4.5 per cent after an unscheduled meeting of the rate setting panel, citing increased inflation pressures following the Ukraine war and the resultant spike in crude oil prices. Retail inflation printed at 6.9 per cent in March and the April reading is forecast to top 7.7 per cent.
'Credit expansion is probably the quickest way to get the economy going again.' 'Easy credit is like a shot of nitro in a race car: In timely, small, quick, doses it can give a tremendous boost but carried to extreme it can destroy the engine,' points out S Muralidharan, former managing director, BNP Paribas.
Automobile retail sales in India increased by 37 per cent in April on a low base of COVID-hit April last year, automobile dealers' body FADA said on Thursday. Total sales across categories rose to 16,27,975 units in April, as compared to 11,87,771 units in the year-ago period. On a year-on-year basis, all vehicle categories including passenger vehicles and two-wheelers were up as compared with April last year.
'FDs should hold your emergency funds, equivalent to around 6-12 times your monthly expenses.'
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday said it will maintain comfortable liquidity conditions and conduct market operations in the form of outright and special open market operations. It will conduct on tap targeted long-term repo operations (TLTRO) with tenors of up to three years for a total amount of up to Rs 1 lakh crore at a floating rate linked to the policy repo rate.
The Reserve Bank of India on Friday decided to leave benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent but maintained an accommodative stance as the economy faces heat of the second Covid wave.
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Thursday said the central bank's asset purchases, aimed at mitigating COVID-19-related liquidity stress in the system, did not dilute its balance sheet or compromise on core principles of central banking. In the wake of the pandemic, the RBI undertook several conventional and unconventional measures. "Unlike many central banks, the RBI's asset purchases did not dilute its balance sheet and hence, did not compromise on core principles of central banking," Das said while addressing an event organised by the Bombay Chamber of Commerce. These purchases were confined to risk-free sovereign (government) bonds including state government securities only, he said.
Experts disagree with the idea and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has the sole right to print money, is not comfortable with it as well.
Last month, RBI slashed cash reserve ratio -- the percentage of deposits that banks have to keep with the RBI -- from 5.5 per cent to 4.75 per cent. With this, the central bank had infused Rs 48,000 crore (Rs 480 billion) into the economy.
Housing sales jumped over 4.5 times year-on-year in April-June across eight cities to 74,330 units on lower base effect, while demand was up 5 per cent from the previous quarter, according to PropTiger data. Housing sales stood at 15,968 units in the April-June period last year and 70,623 units in the January-March quarter of 2022. The price of residential properties rose 5-9 per cent annually, driven by rise in input costs, inflationary pressures and premium attached with ready-to-move-in inventory. Pune and Chennai saw maximum appreciation at 9 per cent each.
Foreign investors have pulled over Rs 6,400 crore from the Indian equity market in the first four trading sessions of the ongoing month when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and US Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Given the headwinds in terms of elevated crude prices, inflation, tight monetary policy among others, FPIs' flows in India are expected to remain volatile in the near term, Shrikant Chouhan, Head - Equity Research (Retail), Kotak Securities, said. Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) remained net sellers for seven months to April 2022, withdrawing a massive amount of over Rs 1.65 lakh crore from equities. This was largely on the back of anticipation of a rate hike by the US Federal Reserve and due to the deteriorating geopolitical environment following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The RBI's mistake may have been in interpreting its mandate to maintain retail inflation at 4%, with 2% leeway in either direction, as being a mandate that permitted it to do nothing even when inflation was at or near the upper bound of 6%, observes T N Ninan.
Equities went into a tailspin on Wednesday after the Reserve Bank surprised the market with a mid-cycle rate hike in a bid to tame soaring inflation.
'I don't see any major setback for the Indian markets post the US Fed event.'
Rating agency Icra on Wednesday said while there is some evidence of the economic recovery becoming broad-based in the third quarter of fiscal 2022, it is yet to attain the durability being sought by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) as a precursor to policy transmission. The agency expects the real GDP to expand 6-6.5 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of FY2022 (+8.4 per cent in Q2 FY2022). It also sees the RBI maintaining the status quo in the upcoming monetary policy review to be held in February.
In a statement, the central bank said heightened volatility in capital markets in reaction to Covid-19 has imposed liquidity strains on mutual funds (MFs), which have intensified in the wake of redemption pressures related to closure of some debt MFs and potential contagious effects therefrom.
The wholesale price-based inflation in February rose to 13.11 per cent on hardening of prices of crude oil and non-food items, even though food articles softened. After two months of mild easing, WPI inflation accelerated in February and remained in double digits for the 11th consecutive month, beginning April 2021. WPI inflation last month was 12.96 per cent, while in February last year, it was 4.83 per cent. The rise in crude oil and natural gas prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, beginning February 24, has put pressure on the wholesale price index, even though food articles saw softening across categories of vegetables to pulses to protein-rich items.
India is much better placed today to deal with future waves of the pandemic relative to the first wave, RBI deputy governor Michael Patra said.
Battling a sharp surge in inflation, the Reserve Bank is all for a smooth monetary policy response and the desire to have smaller hikes led it to tighten the policy in an off-schedule meet, a source said on Thursday. Inflation has been massively impacted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and will in due course also reflect the dent caused by Indonesia banning palm oil exports, the source aware of central bank thinking said, indicating that there was no other option but to respond. "The idea is to have a smooth policy response, not to put in large cold turkey responses," the source said, making it clear that the preference is for smaller magnitude responses and not larger ones.
SBI is the third state-run lender to lower the lending rates after Indian Overseas Bank Tuesday and Bank of Maharashtra which also lowered their loan prices by 5 bps on loan tenors of one year and above, effective April 10.
'If the government spends Rs 10 lakh crore this year then you would be looking at a GDP growth of minus 5 per cent.' 'If you do not do this, you will be looking at GDP growth between minus nine and minus 10 per cent.'
Oil marketing companies IOC, BPCL and HPCL have invited expressions of interest from start-ups that wish to be enrolled as fuel entrepreneurs for doorstep delivery of high-speed diesel through mobile petrol pumps.
'When we look at the quality of our retail loan book, the non-performing asset percentage is low.'
A likely easing in inflationary pressures in the forthcoming months will reopen the window for the RBI to once again prioritise growth and ease its interest rates.
The RBI has set up a panel to review ATM charges, and fees levied by banks.
Reserve Bank on Wednesday said it expects retail inflation at 5.2 per cent in the first half of the current fiscal and revised downwards the target to 5 per cent for the quarter ended March. While headline inflation at 5 per cent in Feb 2021 remains within the tolerance band, some underline constituents are testing the upper tolerance level. Going forward, the food inflation trajectory will critically depend on the temporal and special progress of southwest monsoon in the 2021 season, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday while announcing the first monetary policy for the current fiscal. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has kept the key repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent to support growth in the current situation.
All BSE sectoral indices ended in the red, with oil and gas, bankex, capital goods and finance falling up to 3.04 per cent.
With no rate cuts on the table, the other monetary policy alternative could be to reduce the width of the asymmetric policy corridor or increase in reverse repo rate when the pandemic subsides, they opined.
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