Inflation rate under outgoing MPC that decided 25 monetary policies

The newly constituted Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) includes three new external members: Ram Singh, Saugata Bhattacharya, and Nagesh Kumar. In this context, we review how inflation and policy rates performed under the previous MPC, which featured outgoing external members Jayanth Varma, Ashima Goyal, and Shashank Bhide. The outgoing MPC was constituted in October 2020.

It decided outcomes of 25 monetary policies during its tenure. When the panel assumed office in October 2020, headline inflation was recorded at 7.61 per cent. As it demits office, the recent headline print is at 3.65 per cent in August. During its tenure, headline inflation peaked at 7.79 per cent in April 2022.The policy rate – repo rate – was 4 per cent when the second MPC  was constituted. After increasing the repo rate by 250 basis points to 6.5 per cent between May 2022 and February 2023, the domestic rate-setting panel opted to keep the rate unchanged.