In an after market hour announcement today, RBI raised the repo and reverse repo rate by 25 bps each to 5.50% and 4% respectively (click here to read about repo and reverse repo rates).

Inflation

Anticipation of a rate hike got all the more eminent after the decision to raise the fuel prices and freeing up the price of petrol last week. The move was expected to raise the WPI inflation by about 90 bps. For the month of May, WPI was at 10.16%, above the 10% mark. Though food inflation has been easing, other major indices, fuel index and manufactured products inflation has been rising. RBI in the release noted “There has been some moderation in food price inflation, but the price index of food articles continues to increase. More importantly, the prices of non-food manufactured goods and fuel items have accelerated in recent months”.

Money markets

As compared to earlier rate hikes, this rate hike assumes all the more importance as money markets are facing liquidity crunch. Volumes at repo window have been high during the week, averaging about Rs 60,000 cr for the week. Call rates are also high. This would increase the cost of borrowing of the banks. As for liquidity, RBI has extended the time limit for additional liquidity support and second LAF window till July 16 to ease the liquidity conditions.

Rates of banks

However, it is expected that it would still not lead to an immediate rate hike by the banks as base rate mechanism of pricing loans is being implemented from July 1. Impact of the same on corporate borrowing will be determined only after some time. Thus as of now, corporate borrowing may not get affected.

Market reaction

Since this announcement was done after the close of all the markets, there has been no reaction of the markets. However equity markets have been in negative for most part of the week and still indices are expected to open weak on Monday. Yields on bonds increased after the fuel price announcement last week but the same retraced back most of the gains during the current week. But for the next week again, yields are expected to open strong on Monday.

Author:Praveen Bajaj

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Inflation Internals

• The sub-group of primary articles rose by 14.10% y-o-y against 5.21% in Mar’09.It surged high due to jump in the food articles inflation by 16.65% on a yoy basis but it declined by 0.5% on a mom basis due to lower prices of cereals, fish-inland fruits & vegetables and tea. However, prices of stuffs like poultry chicken, pork, milk, jowar, barley and coffee moved up.
• In the same sub-group, the non-food articles decreased by 0.82% m-o-m but increased 12.77% on a yoy basis. The monthly decline was because of lower prices of vegetable seeds, soybean, copra, raw silk and tobacco. The index for minerals rose by 9.79% y-o-y which was due to higher prices of barites, steatite, chromite iron-ore and asbestos
• The second sub-group of fuel, power, lights and lubricants increased by 6.9% y-o-y from -6.0% in Mar’10. It registered a growth of 0.28% m-o-m due to higher prices of petrol, light diesel oil, aviation turbine fuel and furnace oil
• The third sub-group of manufactured products registered an increase of 7.13% y-o-y from 2.29% in Mar’10. It registered a growth of 0.28% m-o-m mainly because of huge increase in the prices of food-products, sugar and rubber & plastic products. Prices of commodities like cotton textiles, man-made textiles and chemical products too moved in upward direction while wood products, paper products declined.
• Food products declined by 1.15% m-o-m due to decline in the prices of edible food products. Sugar declined by 3.73% while there was a decrease of 0.96% in edible oils. Man-made textiles surged by 0.4% due to increase in the yarn and fibre prices Iron & steel decelerated by 0.31% m-o-m

I believe that the current WPI levels are way beyond the comfort zone of the Reserve Bank of India and a hike in the key rates (repo rate, reverse repo rate) in the April 20 monetary policy review is almost certain. This is also because of the fact that the growth in IIP and the profitability of India Inc. is also back on track, thus leaves ample room for RBI to hike the key rates by at least 50 bps without hindering the growth process.

Author name:Rahul Sonthalia, Research Head, Kredent

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What is Repo Rate?

Definition of Repo Rate: Whenever the banks have any shortage of funds they can borrow it from RBI. Repo rate is the rate at which commercial banks borrow rupees from RBI. A reduction in the repo rate will help banks to get money at a cheaper rate. When the repo rate increases borrowing from RBI becomes more expensive.

What is Reverse Repo Rate?

Definition of Reverse Repo Rate: It is the rate at which Reserve Bank of India (RBI) borrows money from banks. Banks are always happy to lend money to RBI since their money are in safe hands with a good interest. An increase in Reverse repo rate can cause the banks to transfer more funds to RBI due to this attractive interest rates. It can cause the money to be drawn out of the banking system.

In order to tame inflation, anchoring inflationary expectations and considering the signs of strong economic revival  RBI on March 19 , 2010 announced Monetary Policy Measures  with immediate effects:

• to raise the repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) by 25 basis points from 4.75 % to 5 %
• to raise the reverse repo rate under the LAF by 25 basis points from 3.25% to 3.5%

This is the second action since January when RBI announced a 75-basis point rise in the cash reserve ratio (CRR) to 5.75 per cent. But, unlike CRR, which is used to manage liquidity in the system, an increase in the repo and reserve repo rates is aimed at signaling an increase in interest rates.

The action by RBI is the first increase in policy rates since July 2008 when the repo rate was increased 50 basis points. The reverse repo was last raised in July 2006, when RBI raised the rate 25 basis points. Since October, 2008, RBI started the process to reduce interest rates and lowered the CRR to inject liquidity in the system to spur economic activity in the wake of the global downturn. These steps of RBI comes against the backdrop of rising inflation which touched 9.89 per cent in February YoY basis which has exceeded the base line projection of 8.5% for end march 2010 set out in the third quarter review and RBI for the first time said that wholesale price index-based inflation may cross double digits in March 2010.

As per RBI as liquidity in the banking system will remain adequate, credit expansion for sustaining the recovery will not be affected and the RBI will continue to monitor macroeconomic conditions, particularly the price situation, and take further action as warranted.

Impact:
The overall interest rate of banks on advances (like housing loans, consumer loans, auto loans etc) will go up. It is not expected to have a major impact on corporate borrowings in the immediate future. Yield on government securities, which eased to 7.82 per cent, from a 17-month high of 8.02 per cent last week, could harden in the days ahead.

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Author: Abhijeet Ahir, Economic Analyst, MBA Finance (SIIB)

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Some of the key highlights form the policy documents are:

• The share of agriculture in GDP has been declining over time, and as of 2008-09 it was 17.0 per cent. However, experience shows that a deficient rainfall can have a disproportionate impact on overall economic prospects and on the sense of well-being. Poor output will push up prices and depress rural labor incomes. Given the inter-sectoral supply-demand linkages, the knock-on impact on the industrial and services sectors can also be significant.
• Continuing the trend witnessed since Q2 of 2008-09, the two major components of demand, viz., private final consumption expenditure and gross fixed capital formation (with a combined weight of around 88 per cent) decelerated further in Q1 of 2009-10. Government consumption, which had increased sharply in Q3 and Q4 of 2008-09 due to the fiscal stimulus measures and the Sixth Pay Commission payouts, also decelerated in Q1 of 2009-10. While the direct impact of fiscal stimulus is waning, its indirect impact on private consumption and investment will persist for some more time
• The GDP projection for 2009-10 for policy purposes remains unaltered at 6%, made in the First Quarter Review of July 2009.

• Keeping in view the global trend in commodity prices and the domestic demand-supply balance, the baseline projection for WPI inflation at end-March 2010 is placed at 6.5 per cent with an upside bias. This is higher than the 5.0 per cent WPI inflation projected in the First Quarter Review of July 2009 as the upside risks have materialized

• The policy dilemma for India is different in some important respects from that of advanced economies as also other emerging market economies. First, most of these countries do not face an immediate risk of inflation. Indeed, in several advanced economies, the concerns were about a possible deflation, which are just about waning. On the other hand, India is actively confronted with an upturn in inflation – a rising WPI inflation and stubbornly elevated CPI inflation
• An issue of some immediate relevance is the critical need to downsize the government borrowing programme so as to help sustain a moderate interest rate regime. This is crucial for investment demand to pick up on which hinge our long-term economic prospects
• Reversing monetary policy easing stems from the concern about inflation. WPI inflation has turned positive, the base effect which has kept WPI low so far is now gone and CPI inflation has remained stubbornly elevated. On a financial year basis, WPI has already increased by 5.95 per cent. In as much as monetary policy acts with a lag, there is need to act now
• The Reserve Bank’s inflation expectations survey shows that households expect inflation to increase over the next three months as also one year. The lag with which monetary policy operates suggests that there is a case for tightening sooner rather than late

• The balance of judgment at the current juncture is that it may be appropriate to sequence the ‘exit’ in a calibrated way so that while the recovery process is not hampered, inflation expectations remain anchored.

• The ‘exit’ process can begin with the closure of some special liquidity support measures. In this policy government has indeed removed some special liquidity support measures like:

• The statutory liquidity ratio (SLR), which was reduced from 25 per cent of demand and time liabilities to 24 per cent, is being restored to 25 per cent
• The limit for export credit refinance facility [(under section 17(3A) of the RBI Act], which was raised to 50 per cent of eligible outstanding export credit, is being returned to the pre-crisis level of 15%
• The two non-standard refinance facilities: (i) special refinance facility for scheduled commercial banks under section 17(3B) of the RBI Act (available up to March 31, 2010), and (ii) special term repo facility for scheduled commercial banks (for funding to MFs, NBFCs, and HFCs) (available up to March 31, 2010) are being discontinued with immediate effect

• In view of large increase in credit to the commercial real estate sector over the last one year and the extent of restructured advances in this sector, it would be prudent to build cushion against likely non-performing assets (NPAs). Accordingly, it is proposed that to increase the provisioning requirement for advances to the commercial real estate sector classified as ‘standard assets’ from the present level of 0.40 per cent to 1 per cent

Our Analysis:

It is quite evident from the mentioned facts in the credit policy that the central bank will in any circumstances curtain the rise in inflation and on the basis of the overall assessment the first priority among the stance of monetary policy for the remaining period of 2009-10 is to “Keep a vigil on the trends in inflation and be prepared to respond swiftly and effectively through policy adjustments to stabilize inflation expectations.”

Thus we strongly believe that a rate hike is definitely on the cards in third quarter monetary policy for FY2009-10 and hence as already mentioned in the report titled “Credit Policy Eve” one should start booking profits from the rate sensitive sectors like banking, real estate and infrastructure and start moving towards defensive sectors.

Author: Rahul Sonthalia, Analyst, Kredent Group

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