Pointing out that there is a significant room for further reduction in deposit and lending rate, RBI on Tuesday maintained status quo on interest rates in its third quarter review of the Monetary Policy for 2008-09. However, India Inc asks for more from the policy.

Says Ganesh Natarajan, chairman, NASSCOM and global CEO, Zensar Technologies, ?The policy is not much of a surprise. The RBI had made the necessary changes sometime back. But what is more required is a bigger stimulus package that will help the industry, and especially the exporters.?

The central bank on Tuesday left the bank rate unchanged at 6.0 %. The repo rate has been kept unchanged at 5.5 %, and so has the reverse repo rate been kept steady at 4.0 % under the LAF.

According to Sajjan Jindal, president of Assocham and vice-chairman and MD of JSW Steel Ltd, ?The need of hour is that Indian Inc. needed money at relaxed interest rates which could have been possible provided RBI had not maintained status quo in its cash reserve ratio, reverse repo rate and repo rate. The demand creation and liquidity availability is still an issue but will remain so until interest rates are further moderated,? he adds.

?By keeping key rates unchanged in its third quarter Policy review, the RBI has adopted a wait-and-watch stance. The central bank has already put in place several initiatives to infuse much-required liquidity into the system and the effects of those will be visible over the coming days. RBI has also flagged off the fact that the global slowdown has also impacted India, and lowered the growth estimate for the year, which is understandable. The considerable softening of inflation is a silver lining,? said Harsh Goenka, Chairman, RPG Enterprises.

Urging RBI to lower interest rate, VN Dhoot, chairman, Videocon Industries Ltd said, ?Across the globe, interest rates (IRs) are very low, unlike India where IRs is very high. Hence, efforts should have had been made by RBI to lower IRs in order to create encouraging policy framework for the corporates. However, the economy will continue to grow at the same pace with no change in CRR, repo rate and reverse repo rate. If not this time, we expect at least next time RBI may announce lower IRs.?

Meanwhile the industry welcomes extension of bank?s refinancing facilities to mutual funds, non-finance banking and housing companies by relaxing maintenance of SLR upto 1.5%.

Amit Goyal, president of Confederation of Indian Apparel Exporters(CIAe) expresses his disappointment saying, ?The credit policy does not include any relief measures for the textile sector. We have been consistently asking the government and the RBI for a reduction in interest rates on loans procured by textile players from banks. Currently, we are paying an interest at the rate of 8.5% which is far steep then international standards of 4.5%. We are disappointed, as the policy does not include any interest subventions for the sector.