EconomyMoney and credit
Are financial conditions helping or hurting growth?
Our financial conditions index puts money-market rates, bond yields, lending rates, share prices and the rupee on one scale, each against its own history. In Aug 2026 it read −0.74: looser than usual, looser than in 91% of months since 2014. Lending rates did most to make it so. A first reading for Sept 2026, from 3 of the five parts, is −0.13.
Written for anyone who wants one read on whether finance in India is easy or hard to come by. Index to Aug 2026.
The index
Zero is usual, judged against every month from January 2012; a reading of one is about one typical swing away. The tightest month was Aug 2015, at 0.89, and the loosest Apr 2022, at −1.21. A year before the latest complete month it read −0.58.
Tipsheet financial conditions index
Monthly from 2014. The grey line is the index as it could have been computed at each month-end, from data published by then.
How to read it. Above zero, finance is tighter than usual: rates and spreads high, shares weak, the rupee falling or volatile. The newest month may rest on fewer parts until slower data arrive.
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What moves it
The index is the sum of five parts. In Aug 2026, lending rates loosened it by 0.31, the rupee loosened it by 0.26, shares loosened it by 0.09, bonds loosened it by 0.06 and money markets loosened it by 0.02.
What added to the index
Each part's contribution, monthly from 2019. The bars add up to the index.
How to read it. Money markets are the call, T-bill and CD rates against repo, and the real repo rate; bonds the ten-year yield and its real level; lending rates the rate on new loans; shares the Nifty's three-month return and volatility; the rupee its trade-weighted change and volatility.
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After inflation
Interest rates matter after inflation. In Aug 2026 the real repo rate was 0.4% and the real rate on new bank loans 3.8% (Aug 2026), against medians of 1.0% and 4.9% since 2014. Each is the rate less consumer price inflation over the past year, not the inflation people expect.
Real interest rates
Nominal rate less consumer price inflation over the year, monthly.
How to read it. When inflation falls faster than rates, as in 2025, real rates jump without the RBI doing anything; when it rises, they fall.
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What it can and cannot tell you
An index like this summarises; it does not forecast. In tests we registered before computing them (C60 and C61), a tightening of the index did not foretell slower industrial output or slower credit growth over the following months. It is a description of the present, built only from data published at the time, and its level depends on the years it is measured against, which include the high-rate years 2012-14.
The workings
The question
Data
Every chart has a table view, a CSV download and a link to its published JSON. Bundles are listed in data status.