The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has for a ninth straight meeting chosen to keep benchmark interest rates unchanged as it continues to battle retail inflation that has stubbornly stayed above its medium-term target of 4% for 57 months and is beginning to undermine consumer confidence. Laying out the rationale, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das was emphatic that there was no room for complacency given the risks that persistently elevated food price pressures posed to households’ inflation expectations and broader monetary policy credibility. Elevated food prices, he stressed, had not only slowed disinflation in the April-June quarter but had also extended their momentum into July with high frequency food price data pointing to sizeable month-on-month increases in key vegetable prices. Citing Department of Consumer Affairs data, he said tomato prices had surged 62% sequentially, while onion had become almost 23% costlier than in June and potato prices had increased 18%. Food prices, with a weight of about 46% in the overall Consumer Price Index, could not afford to be overlooked, not just for their impact on headline inflation but far more significantly because consumers related the most to the impact food prices had on monthly household budgets. He indicated, without explicitly referencing it, that a suggestion in the Economic Survey urging policymakers to consider delinking food prices from the inflation targeting framework made little sense in the circumstances.