The Planning Commission today said that the RBI has taken a cautious stance due to sticky inflation in its quarterly review of monetary policy by keeping the key rates unchanged.

“As far as looking ahead is concerned, the RBI has taken a slightly cautious stance because of its concerns that inflation is sticky. I have no difficulty with that,” the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, told reporters here.

“They (RBI) are looking (at a situation) that if the monsoon does not improve, then there may be some pressure on that (inflation) front. There is no harm (in) being little cautious on this,” he added.

In its quarterly monetary review unveiled today, RBI kept its key rates like lending, borrowing and CRR unchanged. However, the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) — the amount of deposits banks park in government bonds — was reduced by one per cent to 23 per cent.

On the RBI lowering economic growth projections to 6.5 per cent this fiscal from 7.3 per cent earlier, Mr Ahluwalia said: “As far as reduction in growth rate is concerned, I agree that growth rate is going to be lower than what was projected at the time of budget.”

“They have chosen 6.5 per cent (economic growth for this fiscal), I think that is quite reasonable. If we grow at 6.5 per cent in the current year, then it will be actually a good performance. It will require pick up from the performance of the last quarter (January to March) of previous fiscal year,” he added.

During the fourth quarter of last fiscal, the economy had grown at a nine-year low rate of 5.3 per cent. During the entire 2011-12 fiscal, the economy grew 6.5 per cent.

Asked whether RBI’s almost status quo on monetary policy will affect investments, he said, “I don’t believe that investments are affected by what happens to the short-term repo (lending) rate. This is one of the biggest problems in perception.”

There are many things which need to be done to revive investor sentiment, he said.

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