RBI likely to postpone April credit policy

In the absence of a regular Budget, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may postpone the announcement of its slack season monetary and credit policy from April to May.

The RBI announces the credit policy twice a year ""- in April and in October. While in April it announces new policy initiatives, the October pronouncement is a review of the April policy.

According to sources, RBI is still internally debating on the timing of the policy announcement but it is fairly certain that it will not happen in April. It is likely to announce it after the Budget of the new government.

After he took over as the RBI govenor, Y V Reddy had announced the mid-year review of credit and monetary policy in November instead of October.

The RBI has aready announced a few policy initiatives. Last week, it signed an memorandum of understanding with the government to introduce the market stabilisation bonds, which will help the central bank in sterilising foreign exchange inflows.

These bonds will be a combination of government securities and treasury bills, which are short-term in nature.

The RBI has also revised its liquidity adjustment facility window. It replaced the one-day repo by a seven-day repo and the spread between the interest rates for absorption and infusion of liquidity has been reduced to 150 basis points (bps) from 200 bps.

This has been done by reducing the reverse repo rate from 6.5 per cent to 6 per cent.

As the refinancing facilities have been rendered ineffective with the abundance of liquidity, the standing and back stop facilities have been merged.

The proposed standing deposit facility which might have helped bankers to park funds at rate below repo rate (4.5 per cent) with the RBI can be introduced after amendment of the RBI Act.

As per the Act, RBI cannot accept any clean cash deposits over and above cash reserve ratio (CRR) and pay an interest on that.

"Traditionally the budget always provides direction to the April credit policy. In the absence of the budget, the policy becomes a mere academic exercise for all practical purposes. If it is announced after the new government is in place, the credit policy can be meaningful," said a senior banker.