The RBI’s latest monetary policy meeting, which began on Monday, has several firsts associated with it. This is the first time interest rates will be decided by a monetary policy committee rather than by the RBI Governor alone.
This is also the first policy meeting being chaired by new RBI Governor Urjit Patel, who will have a casting vote in the event of a tie.
Another change will see the decision on the policy rate announced at around 2:45 pm on Tuesday instead of the earlier practice of announcing it at 11 am.
After the two-day meeting to review benchmark rates, the resolution of the MPC will be put up on the RBI website on Tuesday along with the monetary policy report. This will be followed by the interaction with the media and subsequently with the analyst /researcher community.
The Centre had recently constituted the monetary policy committee to decide on the direction of interest rates. The committe has three members from the RBI and three external experts.
The three RBI members — Urjit Patel, R Gandhi and Michael D Patra — are likely to be on the same page with regard to a decision on the repo rate (either to cut or keep it unchanged). However, the three government-appointed members — Chetan Ghate, Pami Dua and Ravindra H Dholakia — may be pulled in different directions.