The RBI raised 25 points. The bond market has added 28 more
Seventeen days, no announcement, and a tenth straight week of rising yields — the worst run for government bonds in thirty years. Whether it has reached your loan depends on which benchmark it sits on.
The announcement was the small part, and the silent part is larger. On 7 October the MPC raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50%, and this paper covered it as a rate decision. Since then the benchmark 10-year government bond yield has gone from 7.193% on 6 October to 7.474% on 23 October — about 28 basis points in seventeen days, with nobody deciding anything. That was the tenth consecutive week of rising yields and, on Business Standard's reckoning, the worst losing streak for government bonds in three decades.
Two benchmarks, two speeds, and most borrowers do not know which one they are on. A loan on an external benchmark (EBLR) is tied to the repo rate: it has taken the 25 points and will take nothing more until the MPC moves again. A loan on MCLR is tied to the bank's own cost of funds, which is what the bond market and the deposit market set between them — so it is taking the 28 points too, on its own reset cycle, with no announcement to warn you. Broadly, floating-rate loans to retail and to micro and small enterprises sanctioned since the external-benchmark mandate sit on EBLR; a good deal of medium-enterprise and older borrowing still sits on MCLR. Your sanction letter says which.
Why it is happening is not a mystery and not over. The drivers named are crude — Brent closed near $116.72 on 23 October — higher global yields, banking liquidity that has gone tight, and an expectation that the RBI is not finished, with some economists now talking about a larger move in December. SBI Research puts the 10-year at 7.6% from here; Trading Economics models a gentler 7.32% by the end of the quarter, and that gap between a bank's own research and a data house is worth more than either number — nobody credible thinks it is going back down this quarter.