Mint Quick Edit | RBI policy: Less dovish, more confident

RBI left not just its policy rate unchanged at 5.5%, but also its economic growth forecast for 2025-26 at 6.5%.

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This suggests that it had already taken a harsh US tariff scenario into account, or expects its impact on GDP to be very mild, or a combination of the two.

What it did alter, and quite sharply, was its inflation projection for this fiscal year, which it slashed to 3.1% from 3.7%.

Also read: Mint Primer | Signals for India from what global central banks did

As this implies a higher real policy rate than RBI earlier anticipated, its latest policy review seems less dovish than last time’s.

Such a reading would need to be qualified, however, by the fact that global uncertainty makes precision forecasting difficult.

Neither growth nor inflation needs to pan out exactly as RBI foresees it, though, for the central bank to get its policy broadly right.

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Its stance remains “neutral" and by waiting to check the efficacy of its earlier policy easing, it has affirmed that neutrality.

And that’s what was needed.