Mint Road rules out rate policy change

India's interest-rate policy hasn't changed and the central bank needs to look at economic growth data "more carefully,'' Deputy Governor Rakesh Mohan said.

The Reserve Bank of India last week raised the benchmark overnight lending rate for the fifth time in a year to help curb inflation that accelerated to a two-year high last month.

The rate increase followed its decision in December to ask banks to set aside more cash to cover deposits. "There's no change from what we've said in the policy,' 'Mohan told reporters in the southern city of Hyderabad.

"We have to look at the figures more carefully.'' India's $854 billion economy, the fourth biggest in Asia, may expand at a record 9.2 per cent in the year ending March 31,following a 9 per cent gain last year, the government-run Central Statistical Organisation said yesterday.

Growth has stoked inflation. A government report tomorrow may show wholesale price inflation accelerated to 6.48 per cent in the week ended January 27, the fastest in more than two years, according to the median estimate of nine analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Central bank governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy on January 31 vowed to slow inflation between 5 per cent and 5.5 per cent "at the earliest'' while continuing to pursue the "medium-term goal''of containing it below 5 per cent.