By Kosaku Narioka
India's central bank has maintained its policy rate, as widely expected amid a backdrop of easing domestic inflation.
Reserve Bank of India Gov. Shaktikanta Das said Thursday that the monetary-policy committee decided to hold its policy repo rate steady at 6.50%.
All nine economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected the central bank to stand pat.
India's consumer-price index in December rose 5.7% from a year earlier, compared with the RBI's inflation target range of 2% to 6%.
Das said the central bank expects its annual inflation to be 4.5% for the fiscal year starting April, following projected inflation of 5.4% this fiscal year.
Some economists expect RBI to start cutting rates in the latter half of 2024 once inflation falls further.
Das said the economy is expected to grow 7% in real terms next fiscal year.
The central bank raised the policy rate by a total of 2.5 percentage points from May 2022 to February last year in response to a surge in inflation sparked by the Russia-Ukraine war and the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since kept the rate unchanged.
Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
02-08-24 0018ET
