India holds rates as inflation nears central bank’s target

Bloomberg

India’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged as rebounding inflation limits room to spur an economy struggling to recover from disruptive government policies.
The benchmark repurchase rate was left at 6 percent, the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement in Mumbai on Wednesday. Five of the six-member monetary policy committee voted for the move, which was predicted by 42 of 48 economists in a Bloomberg survey with the rest seeing a cut to 5.75 percent.
The decision reflects the RBI’s concern about price pressures that are nearing its medium-term target. Supply chains have been broken and growth stayed below potential following the roll out of a new consumption tax and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s withdrawal of high-value currency notes, pushing his advisers to seek lower borrowing costs even as global central banks tighten.
“The MPC remains committed to keeping headline inflation close to 4 percent on a durable basis,” the statement said. It noted that food and fuel price-gains edged up in November, input costs are rising and risks to government revenue could stoke inflation, as could any global financial instability.

‘NOW HAWKISH’
“Rising global oil prices will add inflationary pressure and increase India’s fiscal deficit,” Vik Mehrotra, chief executive officer of Boston-based Venus Capital, said in an email. “The bank has no room to cut rates and its general stance is now hawkish.”
Consumer prices rose at a seven-month high of 3.6 percent in October and a Bloomberg Economics index shows core inflation — which strips out volatile food and fuel — is stubbornly above the central bank’s 4 percent medium-term target. Vegetable and oil prices are surging and pay increases for government employees are raising housing costs.
Nevertheless, Modi’s advisers said India’s rates are too high. The central bank’s tendency to overestimate inflation has cost the economy, according to Ashima Goyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. The view is echoed by her colleague Surjit Bhalla.
Growth in gross domestic product picked up to 6.3 percent in July-September from a year earlier, halting a five-quarter deceleration but still lower than economists estimated. GVA increased 6.1 percent. India ceded its position as the world’s fastest growing major economy early this year and the pace of expansion has since stayed below China’s.
MONITORING DATA
The RBI retained its neutral monetary stance, which means that “all possibilities are there on the table,” Governor Urjit Patel said at a briefing in Mumbai after the announcement. “We did not consider shifting the stance because nothing between October to now was significant enough in the macro outcomes to warrant that.” He said the RBI will continue to monitor incoming data.
Data due this month will show whether India’s current-account deficit has stabilised in July-September after ballooning to a 2013 high the previous quarter. Early next year India will probably publish revised growth numbers for the year ended March 2017 and then in February the government is expected to announce its budget. “Monetary policy can help the economy only after the policy interventions initiated by the government to neutralize effects of demonetization and GST begin to show some results,” said Devendra Kumar Pant, chief economist at India Ratings Ltd.

No surprise from RBI turns bond watchers’ focus to fiscal policy
Bloomberg

The Reserve Bank of India’s policy decision has come and gone, without really changing much for the local bond market that’s grappling with its worst losses since 2013. The central bank kept interest rates unchanged, made a small tweak to its inflation forecast and didn’t really commit to anything on the liquidity-management front. That’s set to turn investors’ focus toward the government’s fiscal policies, given that concern over worsening public finances has also contributed to the bond rout.
“For the rates markets, especially bonds, the key is watching the news around the fiscal policy and commodity prices,” said Vivek Rajpal, a Singapore-based rates strategist at Nomura Holdings Inc. The RBI’s policy was “neutral,” he said, adding however that given the comments were less hawkish than market expectations, it is “unlikely to trigger any further selloff.”