RBI unlikely to change its policy stance
Challenges yet to inflation and inflationary outlook Dr. Sunil Sinha, Principal Economist, India Ratings and Research (Fitch Group) expressed view on RBI's Fifth Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2018-19 says, as expected RBI kept the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.5%. Although RBI has lowered its CPI inflation projection to 2.7%-3.2% in H2:2018-19 and 3.8%-4.2% in H1:2019-20 as against its earlier projection of 3.9%-4.5% in H2:2018-19 and 4.8% in Q1:2019-20, it still believes that there are challenges to inflation and inflationary outlook. These could emanate from (i) volatility and sudden spike in prices of perishable food items, (ii) risk from revision in minimum support prices (MSPs) which has yet not played out fully, (iii) crude oil prices due to geo-political tensions/decision of OPEC to cut production, (iv) volatility in global financial market, (v) fiscal slippages and (vi) staggered impact of HRA rev