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New Delhi: The government on Tuesday reconstituted the Reserve Bank‘s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) by appointing economists Ram Singh, Saugata Bhattacharya and Nagesh Kumar to the crucial six-member rate-setting panel for four years, or until further orders.
The new members will fill in the vacancies created by the exit of Ashima Goyal, Jayanth Varma and Shashank Bhide once their four-year term comes to an end this week.
The MPC is scheduled to meet next on October 7-9 to review the monetary policy.
According to the RBI Act, three MPC members come from the central bank itself-typically the governor, the deputy governor in charge of the monetary policy and another officer chosen by the RBI board-and three more are appointed by the government. The panel is headed by the RBI governor.
Singh is the director of the Delhi School of Economics, while Bhattacharya is the former chief economist at Axis Bank and Kumar is the chief executive at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development.
The reconstitution comes at a crucial time when the US Federal Reserve has resorted to an aggressive 50 basis point cut in its policy rates and central banks of some other advanced economies are expected to follow suit. Some experts expect the RBI to start the rate cut cycle as early as December.
RBI governor Shaktikanta Das has resisted any immediate action, linking RBI rate cut to domestic inflation durably settling at the 4% target.
Retail inflation has remained under its medium-term target of 4% for a second straight month through August and analysts don’t expect any significant spike in it in the coming months.
The MPC raised the benchmark interest rate by 250 basis points between May 2022 and February 2023 and has since maintained a pause to keep inflation under control.
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