Written by:- Geetanjali
Repo Rate remained unchanged by RBI: steady at 6.5%, Affordable Home Loans.
The last MPC(Monetary Policy Committee) meeting of FY 2023-2024 was held on Thursday(February-8-2024). Shaktikanta Das The Governor of R BI mentioned that the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee has decided to continue the existing Repo Rate of 6.5%. Which will maintain liquidity in the market. (Repo Rate refers to the rate of interest at which The Central Bank (RBI) lends money to the commercial banks by buying securities.)
The decision of keeping the Repo Rate at steady 6.5% was taken by an MPC committee of 6 members, out of which 5 members voted in favour of keeping the Repo Rate at an unchanged 6.5% as retail inflation continued to be above its targeted level of 4%.
Home loans will remain affordable due to unchanged Repo rate. Ramani Sastri, Chairman and MD, Sterling Developers, said “that there can be further increase in housing and real estate demand with reduction in rates, making it even more enticing for prospective homebuyers and bolster overall market confidence”.
“With the RBI’s unchanged Repo Rate at 6.5%, homebuyers retain their advantage of relatively affordable home loan interest rate”, added Anuj Puri, Chairman, ANAROCK Group.
Several points were discussed in the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting.We’ve mentioned key takeaways from the Monetary Policy Committee meeting:
# The MPC of Reserve Bank of India headed by Shaktikant Das(Governor of RBI) has decided to keep Repo Rate steady at 6.5%, which will help keeping loans affordable for the loan bearers.In this committee 5 out of 6 members voted in favour of keeping Repo Rate unchanged at 6.5%.
# Committee announced other rates as well, Fixed Reverse Rate at 3.75%, Bank Rate remained at 6.75%, Marginal Standing Facility rate at 6.25%, and the Standing Deposit facility rate at 6.25%.
# Consumer Price Index(CPI) or the retail inflation for the FY 2024-2025 is predicted to be 4.5%,5% in the first quarter, 4% in the second quarter, 4.6% in the third quarter, and 4.7% in the fourth quarter.
#The real GDP growth for FY 2024-25 is calculated to be 7% with 7.2% in the first quarter, 6.8% in quarter two, 7.0% in the third quarter, and 6.9% in the fourth quarter.
# RBI Governor also mentioned that the RBI will soon introduce offline E-Rupee transactions.
# In the MPC meeting,it was proposed to increase the UPI transaction limit from Rs.1 lakh to Rs.5 lakh for hospital and educational institute fee payments.
# Shaktikanta Das mentioned, “MPC will carefully monitor any signs of generalisation of food price pressure to non-food prices which can fritter away the gains in the easing of core inflation”.
