The Reserve Bank of India on Thursday announced it will hold a special meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee on November 3 to discuss the country’s high retail inflation.

India’s retail inflation has stayed above the Reserve Bank of India’s upper tolerance level of 6% for nine straight months till September. The price rise indicator had touched an eight-year-high of 7.79% in April, while in September it stood at 7.41%.

The central bank aims to keep inflation in the range of 2% to 6%.

“Under the provisions of Section 45ZN of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act...an additional meeting of the MPC is being scheduled on November 3, 2022,” the Reserve Bank of India said in a notification issued on Thursday.

Section 45ZN of the Reserve Bank of India deals with the failure to maintain the inflation target.

The monetary policy committee, which has three members from the Reserve Bank of India and three external members, had increased the repo rate by 50 basis points, or 0.5%, to 5.9% in September in the central bank’s attempts to curb inflation.

The repo rate is the interest rate at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks. This was the fourth hike in the repo rate since May.

The meeting on November 3 will be the second off-schedule meeting of the central bank this year after the one that took place in May.