1st LD Writethru: India's central bank keeps key policy rates unchanged

India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), decided on Tuesday to keep its key policy rates and the reserve ratios unchanged, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said.

Rajan conducted the first bi-monthly review of the monetary policy for the current fiscal year and decided to retain the repurchase rate, the reverse repurchase rate, the cash reserve ratio and the statutory ratio at existing levels.

The repurchase rate and reserve repurchase rate have also been maintained at 7.5 percent and 6.5 percent respectively while the cash reserve ratio and the statutory liquidity ratio have been left untouched at 4 percent and 21.5 percent.

Rajan said the RBI is awaiting more robust data on inflation and action from commercial banks to soften their cost of credit to alter its stance.

"Going forward, the accommodative stance of monetary policy will be maintained, but monetary policy actions will be conditioned by incoming data," he said. Endi