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RBI's bond purchases set to surpass Covid era levels

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Mumbai: Bond purchases by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to help infuse liquidity into the system via open market operations (OMO) is likely to eclipse such measures through the Covid period.Institutions expect cumulative purchases via OMO of at least ?4 lakh crore in FY26 would be needed for policy rate transmission to take effect.This would imply that bond purchases by RBI could surpass the ?6.4 lakh crore seen during the covid period between FY20 and FY23.RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra said in his post policy press conference that measures would be taken to take system liquidity to 1% on NDTL which analyst say will be required for transmission of policy rate to lending rate to take place.With the current liquidity infusion by RBI, system liquidity turned positive from late March and the daily average surplus in April stood at ?1.5 lakh crore, or 0.6% of NDTL, according to a report by IDFC First Bank.A large section of bank loan borrowers are yet to see the benefit from the RBIs two consecutive policy rate cuts. Data released by the RBI on Wednesday showed that one-year median marginal cost of fund-based lending rate (MCLR) remained unchanged at 9% in April despite a 50 basis point rate cut since February this year. The repo rate now stands at 6%."The front-loaded infusion of liquidity makes sense from a transmission perspective... The change in liquidity management was much needed to ensure that transmission of the rate cuts takes place. Moreover, the job is not done, and RBI will need to infuse more liquidity in FY26," said Gaura Sen Gupta, chief economist at IDFC First Bank.Nathan Sribalasundaram, Asia EM rates strategist at Nomura forecasts a ?3 lakh crore of liquidity infusion for the full year."They will also likely follow up with some FX swaps and lengthen out the short forwards book, but this is going to be more demand dependent," he said.IDFC First Bank however expects the RBI to infuse a total of ?4 lakh crore via OMOs during this fiscal year.But according to Gupta, "RBI may not want to make the forward book more negative by adding net dollar short positions. Instead, they may allow some of the short-end swaps to mature and extend the maturity of the rest."The net-short dollar book stood at $64.2 billion in March, after hitting a record $88.8 billion the previous month, latest RBI data showed.

 

The Economic Times ,02May,2025

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