India Inc Wants Rate Cut, Says Inflation Likely to Stay Low

New Delhi: Notwithstanding the marginal rise in inflation last month, India Inc said on Wednesday that low oil prices and measures undertaken by the government are likely to keep inflation under check, even as it reiterated the need for an interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank (RBI) to kick start growth.

"Given the slow pace of global recovery and expectations of oil prices to remain at low levels going forward, inflation is expected to remain under control," said Ficci president Jyotsna Suri.

"To give a boost to the capex cycle, there is an urgent need for lowering of lending rates. Since the inflation is largely under control, we urge the RBI to ease the monetary policy," she added.

Reversing a six month declining trend, WPI inflation moved up marginally to 0.11 per cent in December mainly due to an increase in prices of food items.

"Going forward, the moderation of global commodity prices and the measures taken by the government to contain the inflation would help rein in inflationary expectations and prevent inflation from making a comeback in a big way," said CII director general Chandrajit Banerjee said.

"We hope that the conducive inflationary situation would spur RBI to move away from its inflation-centric approach to policy making and focus on rejuvenating growth in the economy and industry, in its forthcoming monetary policy," he added.

Inflation measured on Wholesale Price Index (WPI) was at zero in November.

"Policy makers need to cut the interest rates in order to induce the producers to augment the supply of goods and services on one hand and increase the domestic demand on the other,"  Assocham secretary general D S Rawat said.

"Inflation worries are behind us and current demand and supply dynamics indicate that inflation will consolidate at around 3 per cent (average) in 2015," PHD Chamber president Alok B Shriram said.