'RBI unlikely to touch short-term rates in review'

State Bank of India expects the Reserve Bank of India to keep its key short-term rates untouched in the mid-quarter review of its monetary policy to be announced on September 16.

"It might be a status quo," State Bank's chairman, O P Bhatt, told reporters on the sidelines of a banking conference organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and Indian Banks' Association in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Talking to mediapersons on Tuesday, Standard Chartered's chief executive for India and South Asia, Neeraj Swaroop, too had said that the apex bank could keep the rates untouched.

The RBI has been tightening key benchmark rates since November last year as the country started recovering from the impact of the global economic slowdown.

In its last policy announcement on July 27, the apex bank raised the repo rate by 0.25 per cent to 5.75 per cent and the reverse repo rate by 0.50 per cent to 4.50 per cent.

In the policy, it had also announced that mid-quarter reviews would be done, the first of which will be on September 16.