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Informist, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025

MUMBAI – Following are the highlights of comments by Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra and other top central bank officials to the media on Friday at the conclusion of the Monetary Policy Committee's fifth bi-monthly meeting for 2025-26 (Apr-Mar):

SANJAY MALHOTRA

* We are at neutral today
* Inflation very benign
* We are neutral on future interest rate trajectory
* Have to concentrate on further policy transmission
* Speculative to say if benign CPI will lead to more cuts
* Stated policy is don't target any levels for rupee
* On rupee: Stated policy to allow market to determine level
* Rupee volatility does happen, can happen
* Will continue to reduce excessive volatility in rupee
* Have sufficient reserves, current account very manageable
* Effort is to reduce to abnormal rupee volatility

* FX swap liquidity measure, not to support rupee
* We let rupee find its own position
* Not looking at credit growth at 2x of GDP growth
* We don't target any particular growth rate

* India should get good capital flows going ahead
* In very comfortable position with respect to external sector
* MPC mostly driven by growth-inflation dynamics
* We are very comfortable about CAD
* Tariff impacted sectors to see moderate growth
* Export-oriented sectors may see growth slowdown on US tariffs
* Further policy actions to be data driven
* Expect policy rates to be low, not high, going ahead
* Policy rates to be low, not high, if inflation falls more
* Expect policy rates to be low if inflation remains benign

* CPI inflation at 0.2% not right for India, we target 4%
* Underlying inflation on lower side, that's why we cut rates
* Real interest rates quite high today
* Going forward, deposit rates will moderate
* Deposit rates to moderate to some extent after rate cut

* Will endeavour to improve regulations to curb misselling
* 5% rupee fall leads to 35 bps rise in CPI
* 5% rupee fall leads to 25 bps rise in growth
* To provide sufficient liquidity to ensure policy transmission
* Liquidity surplus to top 1% of banks' NDTL with OMO, FX swap
* Banking liquidity sufficient right now
* Not targetting any particular level for liquidity
* Effort is to keep weighted avg call rate at repo rate
* Endeavour to give balanced govt bond supply in various tenors

* Will provide balanced mix of govt bond supply
* Will not buy state govt bonds in OMOs
* Will take call on more OMO buys as per liquidity conditions
* Should be able to come out of tariff situation stronger

* Working on portal to identify accts with unclaimed deposits
 

POONAM GUPTA
* See GDP growth slowing in qtrs ahead as base effects normalise

* IMF should be satisfied once India's GDP series revised
* Won't read much into IMF classification of rupee as 'crawl-like'

T. RABI SANKAR
* CBDC volume reaching 120 mln
* Focussing on creating unique use-cases for CBDC
* CBDC transactions value around INR 280 bln

SWAMINATHAN J.
* No credit indicators creating problems for us right now
* Overall retail loans have not shown deterioration

End

Compiled by Vinod Bhovad

Filed by Vandana Hingorani

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