By Rajeev Malik of CLSA
The general drift in the financial trenches is that Governor Raghuram Rajan of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will stay on hold at the bank’s April 7 policy meeting. After all, he just cut rates – in a second consecutive out-of-meeting action – in early March. What’s more, consumer price inflation moved up in February; this will constrain the RBI from easing. Finally, following the surprise rate cut in January, the RBI had stayed on hold at its February policy meeting; it will repeat this behaviour next month.
For these reasons, hardly anyone expects a rate cut next week. However, valid as these arguments are, they are overshadowed by factors that make a stronger case for another cut.
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