Mr Pranay Jhaveri, MD – India and South Asia, Euronet
“Today’s announcement by the RBI to integrate conversational payment technology into UPI reaffirms India’s commitment and effort towards accelerating a digital payment ecosystem. This will certainly harness the innovative capabilities and plug the gap to help create a convenient and easy-to-use payment system for the users, resulting in bringing a vast number of users to the digital platform and further accelerating penetration across the nation.
Moreover, using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to facilitate offline transactions will undoubtedly boost resolution metrics and improve the customer experience.”
Mr. Rajesh Sharma, Managing Director – Capri Global Capital Limited
“We acknowledge the RBI’s prudent decision to maintain the repo rate at 6.50%, underscoring the delicate balance between inflation alignment and growth support.
With the base effect stabilizing, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) are expected to see growth in loan segments. This is a positive step with a long-term view of promoting the growth of the MSME segment and ensuring a greater access to formal credit at stable rates.”
Shri Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist, Bank of Baroda
“While the RBI has expectedly not changed the repo rate or stance this time, there has been a change in inflation outlook quite significantly. Interestingly the RBI has increased the forecast to 5.4% from 5.1% with the second quarter inflation crossing 6% (6.2%). This is indicative that for the present calendar year, there is no probability of a rate cut as inflation forecast for Q3 is placed at 5.7%.
The introduction of an incremental CRR, though on a temporary basis, will impound resources of banks and have an upward impact on market rates. While there will still be surpluses in the market, the concept of impounding of resources will exert upward pressure on sentiment and hence interest rates. We can assume that this will be reversed before the festival/busy season as the RBI could have gone in for OMO to permanently take out liquidity from the system.”
