The Reserve Bank of India raised the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payment limits for hospitals and educational institutions from ₹1 lakh to ₹5 lakh per transaction. The announcement was made by Governor Shaktikanta Das while unveiling the December bi-monthly monetary policy. “The enhanced limit will help consumers make UPI payments of higher amounts for education and healthcare purposes,” he said. The cap on e-mandates for recurring online transactions was also hiked to ₹1 lakh. Under the e-mandate framework, an additional factor of authentication (AFA) is required for recurring transactions exceeding ₹15,000 currently. This is now being raised to ₹1 lakh for mutual fund investments, insurance premia payments and credit card payments. “E-mandates for making payments of a recurring nature have become popular among customers. It is now proposed to enhance this limit to ₹1 lakh per transaction for recurring payments of mutual fund subscriptions, insurance premium subscriptions and credit card repayments,” the governor said. The measure, he said, will further accelerate the usage of e-mandates.
Earlier, Das said that the policy repo rate has been kept unchanged at 6.50 per cent. He said that this decision was taken unanimously by the monetary policy committee (MPC). The central bank also revised its gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast in its recent MPC meeting. The RBI boss said that the real GDP growth for 2023-24 is projected at 7 per cent, up from the earlier 6.5 per cent. He added that the GDP growth for Q3 is projected at 6.5 per cent and Q4 is projected at 6 per cent. GDP is likely to grow at 6.7 per cent in Q1 2024, 6.5 per cent in Q2 2024, and 6.4 per cent in Q3 2024. In October's monetary policy review, the central bank projected Q2 real GDP growth at 6.5 per cent, which was 110 bps lower than the actual number released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI). Moreover, Das said that the consumer price inflation (CPI) was pegged at 5.6 per cent for 2023-24, with Q3 at at 5.6 per cent and Q4 at 5.2 per cent. CPI inflation for Q1 2024 is projected at 5.2 per cent, Q2 at 4 per cent and Q3 at 4.3 per cent. Risks are evenly balanced and that the target of 4 per cent inflation is still far away.