The Indian Economy: Dealing with Inflation

In late 2006 and early 2007, the RBI announced some measures to control inflation. These measures included increasing repo rates, the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) and reducing the rate of interest on cash deposited by banks with the RBI. With the increase in the repo rates and bank rates, banks had to pay a higher interest rate for the money they borrowed from the RBI. Consequently, the banks increased the rate at which they lent to their customers. The increase in the CRR reduced the money supply in the system because banks now had to keep more money as reserves. On December 08, 2006, the RBI again increased the CRR by 50 basis points to 5.5%. On January 31, 2007, the RBI increased the repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.5%...

Several analysts were of the view that the RBI could have handled the 2006-07 inflation without tinkering with the interest rates, which according to them could slow down economic growth. Others believed that high inflation was often seen by investors as a sign of economic mismanagement and sustained high inflation would affect investor confidence in the economy.

However, the inflation rate in emerging economies was usually higher than developed economies (Refer Exhibit VI for inflation rates in some developed and developing countries)...