RBI Governor meets Jaitley ahead of monetary review

New Delhi, Aug 1 (IANS) Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on Friday met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to discuss economic issues ahead of the central bank’s bi-monthly monetary policy review on Tuesday.

"I caught up on economic issues with the finance minister," Rajan said after the meeting here.

The RBI is likely to keep rates unchanged when it reviews its monetary policy Tuesday.

Known for the primacy he accords to controlling inflation, Rajan raised interest rates three times since he took office in September 2013, even as economic growth slowed to decade-low rates.

The RBI governor has set a target of bringing down consumer price inflation to 8 percent by the end of the fiscal, and to 6 percent by the next fiscal.

In its last policy review in June, the RBI had kept the repo rate at which it lends to the banks unchanged at 8 percent.

It had cut the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) by 0.5 percent to 23 percent that allowed banks to have an additional Rs.40,000 crore and expanded their scope to give credit.