(FE)
Impatient for faster economic growth, India’s government is lobbying for a reduction in official interest rates in coming months as it expects inflation to stay close to a 4 percent target, finance ministry officials said. At its last meeting in October, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) left the repo rate at 6.0 percent, near a seven-year low, and a Reuters poll found that economists expected the rate to stay there through to the second quarter of next year. The finance ministry, according to officials, wants a rate cut sooner than that, putting a focus on the MPC meeting on Dec. 5-6, or when it next convenes in February. “We expect the RBI to cut policy rates, if not in December then in its next policy review,” one ministry official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. After that, he said, higher oil prices could fuel inflation, making it more difficult to cut rates. At its Oct. 4 meeting, the MPC voted 5-1 to keep rates unchanged, and minutes released on Oct. 18 showed RBI Governor Urjit Patel flagging risks to the inflation outlook, and the need for more evidence to show whether headwinds holding back economic growth were “transient or sustained”. On Thursday, India will release GDP data for the July-September quarter, having seen economic growth slow to a three year low of 5.7 percent in the previous three months. The weak growth means 3-1/2 years into his 5-year term, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is falling a long way short of his promise of a dynamic economy to create jobs for the millions of young Indians joining the labour force each year.
