Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not changed the interest rates for the eighth consecutive time. RBI has kept the interest rates unchanged at 6.5% which means loans will not become expensive and your EMI will also not go up. RBI last raised the rates by 0.25% to 6.5% in February 2023 and thereafter, this rate has remained intact. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das gave information about the decisions taken in the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting held last day. This meeting is held every two months. RBI had not increased interest rates in the earlier meeting held in April. Notably, RBI's MPC has six members comprising both external and RBI officials. Along with Governor Das, RBI officials Rajiv Ranjan serves as Executive Director and Michael Debabrata Patra is Deputy Governor. Shashank Bhide, Ashima Goyal and Jayant R Verma are external members.

Repo rate was hiked 6 times in FY 2022-23

The first meeting of FY 2022-23 was held in April-2022. Then RBI kept the repo rate stable at 4%, but RBI called an emergency meeting on 2 and 3 May and increased the repo rate by 0.40% to 4.40%. This change in repo rate happened after 22 May 2020. After this, in the meeting held from 6 to 8 June, the repo rate was increased by 0.50%. This increased the repo rate from 4.40% to 4.90%. Then in August it was increased by 0.50%, taking it to 5.40%. In September, interest rates rose to 5.90%. Then in December, interest rates reached 6.25%. After this, the last monetary policy meeting of the financial year 2022-23 was held in February, in which interest rates were increased from 6.25% to 6.50%. Meanwhile, RBI has raised the GDP forecast and maintained the inflation forecast. It said that the RBI has raised the GDP growth forecast for FY25 to 7.2% and maintained the inflation forecast for FY 2024-25 at 4.5%.