Governor Shaktikanta Das, the head of the Reserve Bank of India monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting will announce the the policy stance of the central bank today at 10 am. The bi-monthly MPC meeting started on Wednesday and financial market participants in India who closely monitored the meeting are waiting for the announcements.

The RBI typically conducts six bi-monthly meetings in a financial year, where it deliberates interest rates, money supply, inflation outlook, and various macroeconomic indicators.

RBI Monetary Policy Meeting: Where to watch

The outcome of a three-day meeting of the RBI's rate-setting panel will be announced by Governor Shaktikanta Das at 10 am. Das will address a post-policy press conference around December 8. The press address of RBI will be live-streamed on RBI's YouTube channel or RBI's official X (formerly Twitter) handle.

Top Points On RBI's Monetary Policy Committee:

As things stand, the monetary policy committee is most likely to maintain the status quo. For the fourth straight occasion, the monetary policy committee, through its October review meeting, unanimously decided to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent, thus maintaining the status quo.

In its past four meetings, it held the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent. The repo rate is the rate of interest at which RBI lends to other banks.
Das reiterated that the monetary policy committee is committed to aligning India's headline inflation at a 4 per cent level.

Barring the latest pauses, the RBI raised the repo rate by 250 basis points cumulatively to 6.5 per cent since May 2022 in the fight against inflation.

Retail inflation in India continued to ease through October, supported by a relative decline in some of the sub-indexes. The October consumer price index (CPI) came at a four-month low of 4.87 per cent against 5.02 per cent the previous month.

Retail inflation in India though, is in RBI's 2-6 per cent comfort level but is above the ideal 4 per cent scenario.

The Indian economy grew 7.6 per cent during the July-September quarter of the current financial year 2023-24, remaining the fastest-growing major economy. India's GDP growth for the April-June quarter grew 7.8 per cent.

SBI Research, in a report in the run-up to the RBI policy meeting, said they expect the central bank to continue to pause the repo rate. "Domestically, we believe at 6.50%, we are in for a prolonged pause, no rate reversal cycle till Jun'24," the SBI Research report said.