BANKERS' VIEW - Bank chiefs react to monetary policy

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday began the first phase of its exit from expansionary policy by ending some liquidity support measures taken when the global crisis hit Asia's third-largest economy harder than expected, but left key policy rates unchanged.

It raised the statutory liquidity ratio of commercial banks to 25 percent from 24 percent effective Nov. 7, and said the collateralised borrowing and lending obligation liabilities of banks would be subject to cash reserve ratio requirements from Nov. 21.

As expected, the RBI left the repo rate at 4.75 percent and the reverse repo rate at 3.25 percent. The cash reserve ratio was held steady at 5.0 percent.

Following are reactions from top bank officials to the policy:

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S.K. GOEL, CHAIRMAN AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UCO BANK:

"In the third and the fourth quarter there will definitely be good growth in credit and overall we can expect it to come to around 18 percent. On 70 percent provisioning norm, we have told RBI to wait for some time and continue with the irate norms which are already existing. Not much of impact seen because in case of commercial real estate, lending banks were told to keep a cap and shift a part to infrastructure and education."

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(Earlier)