RBI may take more steps to pep up economy: FinMin

The finance ministry said on Wednesday the RBI may take in January more measures like the ones it announced on Tuesday to exit from the accomodative monetary stance adopted to spur the economy that had slowed down following the global financial crisis.

"Whatever you will see it will be in January, that is my assessment," finance secretary Ashok Chawla told reporters when asked if he expects the RBI to take more steps as part of its exit policy, other than the policy rates and cash reserve ratio hike.

At its monetary review on Tuesday, the RBI raised the statutory liquidity ratio by 1 percentage point to 25 per cent and discontinued the special repo facility for banks to provide liquidity to mutual funds and others.

Statutory liquidity ratio is the deposits that commercial banks are to park in government securities.

The RBI governor, D Subbarao, has described these measures as the first phase of withdrawal from the stimuli package.

The central bank kept the repo-rate at which banks borrow from the RBI in exchange of government bonds at 4.75 per cent, the reverse-repo at which the apex bank accepts deposits from banks at 3.25 per cent and the cash reserve ratio, the portion of cash banks park with the Reserve Bank, at 5 per cent -- all unchanged.