The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday left unchanged the key policy rate — Repo rate — at 4 per cent and the Reverse repo rate at 3.35 per cent.
However, the RBI introduced the Standing Deposit Facility (SDF) – an additional tool for absorbing liquidity – at an interest rate of 3.75 per cent. The central bank retained its accommodative policy stance but hinted that it will be less accommodative in the wake of elevated inflation levels.
RBI launches UPI for 400 mn feature phone users to widen digital payment reach. (1) UPI123Pay – Option to make Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments for feature phone users, and (2) DigiSaathi – a 24×7 Helpline to address the queries of digital payment users across products.
In the Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies announced as a part of the Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement for 2021-22 dated February 10, 2022, regarding review of the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) Guidelines. The draft Reserve Bank of India (Credit Derivatives) Directions, 2021 were released for public comments on February 16, 2021. Based on the feedback received from the market participants, the draft Directions were reviewed and have since been finalised. The Master Direction – Reserve Bank of India (Credit Derivatives) Directions, 2022 are enclosed herewith.
Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies sets out various developmental and regulatory policy measures relating to (i) liquidity measures; (ii) financial markets; (iii) payment and settlement systems and (iv) regulation and supervision.
RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had began its three-day deliberations on February 8th instead of 7th due to Maharashtra government’s decision to declare February 7 as a public holiday to mourn the passing of the singing legend Lata Mangeshkar.
The RBI has decided to continue its accomodative stance and has kept repo rate unchanged at 4 percent and reverse repo rate unchanged at 3.35 percent. The Reserve Bank of India has projected real GDP Growth at 7.8 percent for fiscal year 2022-23.The CPI inflation projection has been retained at 5.3% for FY 2021-22 and 4.5% for FY 2022-23.
The Reserve Bank of India released the January 2022 issue of its monthly Bulletin which includes two speeches, four articles and current statistics. The four articles are: I. State of the Economy; II. Indian Agriculture: Achievements and Challenges; III. The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Consumer Confidence in India; and IV. Changing Dynamics of Foreign Direct Investment in India.
Reserve Bank released the 24th issue of the Financial Stability Report (FSR), which reflects the collective assessment of the Sub-Committee of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) on risks to financial stability and the resilience of the financial system.
Reserve Bank of India released the Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2020-21, a statutory publication in compliance with Section 36 (2) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. This Report presents the performance of the banking sector, including co-operative banks, and non-banking financial institutions during 2020-21 and 2021-22 so far.
Reserve Bank of India on Thurday extended card tokenisation deadline by six months to June 30, 2022. The earlier deadline was December 31, 2021. Post June 30, 2022, merchants will not be able to store card information of users and will have to replace each card number with a randomised token number.
RBI has reviewed and revised the existing framework for SCB’s and also issued fresh PCA Framework for NBFC’s. The new PCA norms for SCB’s shall be effective January 1st, 2022 & for NBFC’s the PCA norms will be effective wef October 1, 2022.