The Reserve Bank of India has decided to conduct fresh purchase auctions of government securities under open market operations for an aggregate amount of Rs 80,000 crore, according to a release issued on Tuesday.
This will be carried out in four tranches of Rs 20,000 crore each, on April 3, April 8, April 22 and April 29, it added.
The central bank will continue to monitor evolving liquidity and market conditions and take measures as appropriate to ensure orderly liquidity conditions, it stated.
The move is in continuation of the RBI's recent measures to inject liquidity into the system. Earlier in March, it conducted OMO purchases of government securities worth Rs 1 lakh crore in two tranches of Rs 50,000 crore each. The central bank also held a dollar-rupee buy/sell swap auction of $10 billion for 36 months.
FY25 has ended with a banking liquidity surplus of Rs 894 billion vs a deficit of Rs 2.4 trillion last week, with an average deficit of Rs 1.3 trillion, said Madhavi Arora, lead economist at Emkay. Massive RBI liquidity infusion of Rs 3.2 trillion, along with government spending and recent FPI inflows, have helped too.
Going forward, Q1FY26 is poised for very comfortable liquidity, led by an estimated Rs 2.8-3 trillion RBI dividend by the end of May, given massive profits made on FX gross sales of an estimated nearly $360-375 billion; the budgeted RBI surplus is only about Rs 2.2 trillion, Arora said.
We see an increasing likelihood of the RBI shifting stance at its upcoming meeting in April, with liquidity expected to remain in surplus. Teresa John, lead economist at Nirmal Bang. "We continue to expect a 25 basis point rate cut at the April meeting, with cumulative rate cuts of at least 75 basis points."
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