RBI may revise working hours of Indian financial institutions

Working hours of Indian financial institutions, especially those under the purview of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), may be revised soon to align with those of global markets.

Speaking at the post-policy press conference on Wednesday, RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya said the central bank has formed an internal working group to look into various aspects of revising working hours of the payment and settlement infrastructure.

The need to revise working hours of domestic financial institutions appears to have arisen following the decision of the domestic stock exchanges to increase trading hours in some segments of the securities markets -- especially the derivatives markets -- to put them in sync with global markets.


In line with market expectations, the monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank today hiked repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.50 per cent in its third bi-monthly monetary policy review of 2018-19.

The RBI move means it's a back to back interest rate increase. In its June policy meet, the rate-setting panel headed by Governor Urjit Patel raised repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25 per cent. Back then, that was the first rate increase since Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014.