RBI Governor Urjit Patel on Friday called on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and is believed to have discussed macro-economic issues ahead of October monetary policy review amid rate cut demands to boost sagging growth.
The six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) headed by Patel will meet for two days on October 3 and 4 in Mumbai to deliberate on the fourth bi-monthly monetary policy statement for 2017-18.
The RBI Governor usually meets Union finance minister before the monetary policy review. The Governor did not take questions from reporters after meeting Jaitley. “The resolution of the MPC will be placed on the website at 2.30 pm on October 4, 2017,” the central bank said in a statement. With the GDP growth falling to a three-year low of 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of the fiscal and retail inflation remaining in the target range, there have been demands of further lowering of the key lending or repo rate.
The RBI had reduced the repo rate by 25 basis points to 6 per cent in its August policy review. Retail inflation was at 3.36 per cent in August (the latest data). The RBI has been tasked to keep inflation at 4 per cent with an upper and lower tolerance level of 2 per cent.
