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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has kept its key interest rate unchanged at its penultimate monetary policy review of the fiscal on Wednesday, 5 December, reported news agency ANI.
The reverse repo rate remains unchanged at 6.25 percent and the Bank Rate at 6.75%.
The review comes at a time when inflation, the central bank's key concern, has softened, as has GDP growth, according to the figures for the second quarter ending in September.
At its previous bi-monthly review in October, the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had held its repo rate, also called the short-term lending rate, unchanged at 6.5 percent in the context of rising crude oil prices posing an inflationary risk as well as a weakening rupee.
The government's differences with the RBI centres on four issues – the former wants liquidity support to head off any credit freeze risk, a relaxation in capital requirements for lenders, relaxing the prompt corrective action (PCA) rules for banks struggling with accumulated non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, and support for micro, small and medium enterprises.
The current liquidity crunch, particularly among non-banking finance companies, follows a series of defaults last month by the privately-run IL&FS and banks hesitating to lend after a series of scams, most notably the Rs 14,000 crore fraud on state-run Punjab National Bank reported in February.
(With inputs from IANS)
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