Rates on hold but RBI MPC gets battle ready for economy as Omicron looms

Committee meeting kept policy stance accommodative as Jayanth Varma opposed, but the central bank later worked on raising money market rates through VRRR.

Monetary policy committee (MPC) members feared rising inflation but felt that the momentum of growth recovery was not sufficient to merit policy tightening, show the minutes of the meeting released on Wednesday.

The six-member MPC, which announced its outcome on December 8, voted unanimously to keep the policy repo rate unchanged. However, external member Jayanth R Varma continued to vote against keeping the stance accommodative. The repo and the reverse repo rates remained unchanged at 4.00 per cent and 3.35 per cent, respectively, after the December 8 policy.

Governor Shaktikanta Das worried about the Indian economy facing “several headwinds emanating