Ahead of the third bi-monthly monetary policy review on August 4, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan today met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and discussed a wide range of issues.
Governor Rajan is understood to have discussed current macroeconomic conditions and the global economic scenario with the Finance Minister in the customary meeting.
RBI is scheduled to announce its policy decision on August 4, and there are expectations that the central bank may not cut the benchmark rate as retail inflation is over 5 per cent.
While retail inflation in June rose to an 8-month high of 5.4 per cent, the wholesale price index (WPI) based inflation came in at (-)2.4 per cent in the same month.
RBI mostly tracks consumer price inflation for its policy decision.
In its last policy review on June 2, RBI cut repo rate 0.25 per cent for the third time this year to spur investment and growth.
During the year, RBI has reduced the rate thrice by 0.75 per cent.
RBI cut the policy rate (the short-term lending rate) from 7.5 per cent to 7.25 per cent in June, but left all other policy tools such as cash reserve ratio (CRR) and statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) unchanged at 4 per cent and 21.5 per cent, respectively.
