By Dharamraj Dhutia
MUMBAI, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Indian government bond yields opened lower on Tuesday after the central bank announced a slew of measures to address a durable solution for the liquidity shortage, but the selling pressure from state-run banks capped the decline.
The 10-year bond yield IN067934G=CC slipped to 6.6254%, its lowest since mid-February 2022, early in the day before pulling back to 6.6458% as of 10:00 a.m. IST. It closed at 6.6800% in the previous session.
"There is heavy profit-booking from PSU banks, which has put a brake on the bond rally, a replica of what happened on Monday," a trader with a state-run bank said.
As part of its liquidity infusion package, the Reserve Bank of India will buy bonds worth 600 billion rupees ($6.94 billion) in three tranches of 200 billion rupees each.
It will also conduct a six-month USD/INR buy/sell swap auction for $5 billion on Jan. 31 and a 56-day variable rate repo auction worth 500 billion rupees on Feb. 7.
This after the RBI net bought bonds worth 101.75 billion rupees in the secondary market in the week ended Jan. 17 and started daily fund infusion through repos.
Analysts and traders said these measures could be a precursor to an interest rate cut at the RBI's next monetary policy meeting on Feb. 7.
The new members of the RBI's monetary policy committee have conveyed little on their bias formally, but their actions suggest they are paving the path for monetary easing, DBS Bank said.
"We expect a 25 basis point cut at the February meeting, marking a start to the shallow rate-cut cycle."
But before that, the market's focus will be on the federal budget on Feb. 1, with the fiscal deficit target and borrowing target for the next fiscal year of particular interest.
The government will likely stick to its fiscal deficit target of 4.5% of gross domestic product, with gross borrowing forecast at 14.28 trillion rupees, a Reuters poll showed. ($1 = 86.5125 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Dharamraj Dhutia; Editing by Savio D'Souza)
((Dharamraj.dhutia@tr.com))
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