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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday pulled out Rs 2,00,031 crore transient liquidity from the banking system through a seven-day variable rate reverse repo (VRRR) auction. The central bank had received higher bids worth Rs 2,28,098 crore than the notified amount of Rs 2 lakh crore in the auction. The RBI accepted the bid at a 5.24 per cent cut-off rate and 5.23 per cent weighted average rate. Currently, the liquidity in the banking system is estimated to be in surplus of around Rs 4.09 lakh crore. Before this, the central bank had conducted a seven-day VRRR auction on April 10 and pulled out Rs 2,00,041 crore of transient liquidity from the banking system. These funds were reversed today into the banking system. "Going ahead, we will continue to be proactive and pre-emptive in liquidity management and ensure sufficient liquidity in the banking system to meet the productive requirements of the economy," RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said during the April monetary policy.
Margin pressure for Indian banks could increase, as the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) flexibility to inject local-currency liquidity into the banking system has narrowed amid efforts to contain rupee volatility, a report said on Thursday. However, banks' direct foreign-currency risks remain limited, Fitch Ratings said in a report. "Sector margins could decline by 20-30 bps below our current 3.1 per cent forecast for the financial year ending March 31, 2027 (FY27) if higher funding costs linked to Middle East tensions persist. This could reduce operating profit/risk-weighted assets (RWAs) - our core earnings metric - by around 30-40bps, from our 2.5 per cent forecast for FY27," it said. The base case assumed deposit costs would decline in FY27 as accommodative liquidity would enable further transmission of the RBI's 125 bps of policy rate cuts since December 2024; only 44 bps have been passed through to deposit rates as of January 2026, due to intensified competition for deposits wit