Highlights of monetary policy review by India's central bank

Mumbai: Following are the highlights of the quarterly monetary policy review conducted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) here Friday in which some key rates were left unchanged and the country's growth targeted was lowered for this fiscal:
- Bank rate kept unchanged at 6 percent.
- Repo rate has been kept unchanged at 5.5 percent.
- Reverse repo rate kept unchanged at 4 percent.
- Cash reserve ratio (CRR) kept unchanged at 5 percent.
- Statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) kept unchanged at 24 percent.
- Gross domestic product (GDP) growth target for 2008-09 lowered to 7 percent.
- Inflation to be in the range of 4-4.5 percent.
- Inflation to fall below 3 percent by March.
- Central bank interventions since September resulted in more liquidity of IRs.3.88 trillion (IRs.388,000 crore).
- Permanent cut in SLR has added IRs.400 billion (IRs 40, 000 crore) to liquidity.
- Capital expenditure plans slowing down, but ongoing projects to continue.
- Fiscal deficit target revised to 5.9 percent of GDP from 2.5 percent.
- Excise, customs duty cuts may lower government revenues by 0.6 percent of GDP.
- Consolidated fiscal deficit of states is expected to rise to 2.6 percent of GDP.